Windex
by muchtvs
Summary: A Seth POV concerning the season two finale. Rated M for language and overall content. Thanks for reading. Completed.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** OC, not mine, although I'd like to think I take very good care of it.

**Author's Note:** Ok, if you are reading _Best of Intentions_…please do not kill me. I swear on all that is OC holy, I will have an update by the end of the month. I just have had the hardest time working my way out of a slump with that story. Thanks to everyone who has been reviewing _Best_ and sending me e-mails to get my ass in gear. I will never, ever abandon that story, promise. But…I have been cheating on it with this one. (Head hung in shame.)

This is a short story, only eight parts in all. It's done, so one update a day for the next eight days. This is my take on the season two finale. I'm sure it will be completely different from the actual season three premiere. Hope you can go along for the ride.

Thanks to betas **Joey**, **Crashcmb** and the many others who read and provided feedback to me. Love you guys.

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**Windex**

_A Seth POV Concerning the Season Two Finale_

Part One

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"Seth?"

Ryan's voice is so gravely, I contemplate for a split second that maybe he's channeling Harvey Feinstein.

Most people would initiate a phone conversation with hello or at least some sort of simple salutation.

Ryan starts with a threat.

"I'm leaving."

No, cancel that, a promise.

Ryan's not one to fuck around with the whole, _I'm gonna' do this…I'm gonna' do that_ dance of attention, _please rush over and stop me and save me from doing something stupid._

"I'm leaving."

Which means he is.

Which means there's gonna' be a problem. 'Cause the last time I saw Ryan, he had an oxygen mask over his mouth, an IV in his hand and a Band of His Brother's bruises around his neck.

He was more or less unconscious in an emergency room, getting a cast wrapped around his right forearm.

It's four in the morning and my dad should be watching Ryan like a hawk, like he promised me he would as he shoved me into Aunt Hailey's arms and out of the hospital trauma doors. But obviously he's not and the very fact that Ryan called me instead of just disappearing from the ER is a miracle. A ticking alarm clock of a miracle. I can feel the precious tic tocks of opportunity slide past me. I can hear Ryan's ragged breathing on the other end of the phone. He won't wait for me forever. I figure I have ten, maybe fifteen more seconds to stall and then Ryan will give up, hang up and God only knows what happens next.

Who can possibly even think rationally under these conditions?

That'll be exactly what I'll tell my Dad when he comes home pissed off and looking for someone to blame once he realizes that Ryan has ditched the hospital. I'll try my best not to whine, although I will anyway.

_"What was I supposed to do Dad? You were supposed to be with him. He called the house all crazy and breathing challenged and talking about bouncing from the hospital. I was like a quarterback and all these buff guys were rushing at me and what was I supposed to do Dad? Huh? I panicked and just ran with the ball, ok? Ryan called and I just went and got him."  
_

I want my mom to not be a Newport cliché.

I want Summer to learn how to keep secrets and not tell me things that I, in turn, tell other people.

I want to turn back time and go to an Imax movie instead of sentencing Ryan and his brother to their own amazingly twisted version of Cain and Abel.

"I'll be there in ten minutes," I tell Ryan, mostly 'cause I'm so goddamned grateful that I'm still on his red velvet rope list.

I'm still someone he's willing to talk to, willing to let in.

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"Ryan, you're bleeding."

I'm guessing the removal of the IV was a bit of self-surgery.

I try and hand him a pile of fast food napkins that have managed to amass already in the rent-a-car. He doesn't bother to reach for them so I have to lean over and press hard on the top of his hand while trying to stay between the white lines. Who knew that driving with your knees was so easy? I should pull over but Ryan is looking a tad bit too far on the 'de' side of deranged and as much as I'm dreading dealing with my Dad and his imminent anger over my liberating Ryan from the Hoag ER, the thought of explaining how I lost Ryan on the deserted streets of Newport Beach at 4:20 a.m. is enough to keep me speeding until I land in my driveway.

I need Ryan safe and sound in the house. Not that that's much of a guarantee, granted, but then again, I'm batting one thousand compared to what my Dad has managed tonight in terms of Ryansitting.

I can tell he's in a world of pain. He hasn't stopped fidgeting, hasn't stopped roving for a comfortable position since he first sat down in the car. His hair still has blood in it and his bangs, coated red with the stuff, are sticking up stiffly in several different directions. A very inappropriate joke comes to mind concerning Cameron Diaz and sperm masquerading as hair gel and Jesus Christ, I almost let an inane comment loose before I stop myself… and remind myself…that Marissa just didn't blow away Trey tonight. She blew away our fucking throwaway years.

Goodbye meaningless fun.

I try and remember whom I'm currently blaming the most for bursting my tender childhood bubble.

But it's so hard to pick one person, when we all did such a wonderful job contributing.

My Dad brought Trey home and Trey attacked Marissa and Marissa kept all cloak-and-dagger and Summer figured it out and she told me and I told Ryan and Ryan fucking did what he does best and I called Marissa and she saved Ryan, evidently, by killing his brother.

"Seth?"

I look over at him.

Wow, what a moment. I should be a director. Ryan and I, we should have a camera in the car right now. This is the stuff that Oscars are made of. This is the kind of thing, the kind of story that you try and tell someone later, but unless they are there, unless they are seeing what you are seeing, and experiencing it, like you are, in real time, in real motion, they won't understand, they won't appreciate what a fantastic train wreck of a ride it was.

"Seth?"

Ryan's repeatedly hitting his forehead with the palm of his hand, the one that isn't bleeding, which I suppose is somewhat a step in the right direction.

Only it's not, 'cause it's also the hand with the cast.

"I can't remember. Why can't I remember?"

"It's okay Ryan," I tell him and gently pull his hand away from doing any more damage to his brain than has already been done tonight and I don't even have to ask before I give him the answer he's trying to pound, word by word, out of his skull.

"Trey's dead, Ryan."

The casted arm takes out the passenger window and I wonder, doubting very highly that any of this is covered by rental insurance, which item will have to be replaced first.

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To be continued………….


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** Still don't own any part of the OC, although I did get my S2 DVD's in the mail today. Yeah!

**Author's Note:** Thanks to **Joey** and **Crash **for the beta job. Part two of eight.

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**Windex**

_A Seth POV Concerning the Season Two Finale_

Part Two

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"SETH!"

Aunt Hailey screams at me from the open front door.

She comes charging at me as I pull up the driveway, cell phone in one hand, arms flapping up and down.

From the glare of my headlights she looks like a giant, agitated, flightless bird.

I glance over at Ryan and give him one of my We're In For It Now faces and wait for him to raise his eyebrows and say something completely obvious, like, 'Well, Hailey's pissed.' But of course, he doesn't answer, because I'm not even sure if Ryan knows where he is. His IV hand is caked with dried blood, the casted hand is bleeding and I'm gonna' need more napkins.

I wonder when McDonald's opens.

I get out of the car to meet Hailey because it seems, survival wise, way smarter than being trapped in the rent-a-car and Hales is a big girl and could clearly kick my ass.

I just feel safer on the open range.

"What is wrong with you?" She slaps at my arm. "Taking off like that, without telling me. Sandy called and I go to get you and you're gone."

I stand there and take my beating because I'm not really sure what to say anymore.

Nothing that wants to come out of my mouth seems appropriate after tonight's proceedings, high jinks, silly, wacky going-ons. Smart-ass is cute and quirky and clever in the kitchen, when Grandpa and Dad are fighting or when Ryan's trying to study or Mom is searching for her briefcase that I hid. But now, all with the dead grandpa, and the Kirsten in the rehab, and the attempted rape, and brother-on-brother ass kicking, and Marissa practicing her second amendment rights, I feel like my snarky card has been revoked and I don't really have any other means of communication to fall back on.

I'm verbally defunct—a man without a lexicon.

"God!" Hailey pushes the palms of her hands onto the side of her head. "What were you thinking, Seth? Has everyone lost their fucking minds tonight?"

Quite possibly, I'm not really completely clear on that.

Sure does feels like it, doesn't it?

Let's see, Trey lost his life, Ryan's losing his marbles, Marissa may lose her freedom, Dad lost Ryan.

Rent-a-car lost its window.

"Seth!"

Well, it's obvious what Aunt Hailey's losing, that would be her patience, with me, and she acts out this frustration by shoving her cell phone in my hand and issuing me the order of, "Call Sandy. He's frantic. The hospital can't find Ryan and your dad calls here, to check on you, and you're missing too and how do you think he must feel right now, Seth?"

Negligent? Clueless? Like Little Bo Peep who has lost her sheep?

"Do you know how I felt, Seth? Having to tell him I had no idea where you were?"

Stupid? Useless? Like the worst replacement for Mom…ever?

She grabs my arm and starts marching me away from the car. "Get in this house and call Sandy and tell him you are fine."

"Um," I put a stop to the movement, hold up a finger, and point to the passenger side of the car.

Hailey follows my lead, just like Lassie sniffing for Timmy in the well, and circles around the passenger side door.

"Oh my God, Ryan."

Ding, ding, ding.

We have a winner.

"Seth, what the hell happened to the window?"

If that's not proof that Hailey has been gone a long time and is totally ignorant, I'm not sure what is. 'Cause anybody else in my immediate universe? They wouldn't need to be asking what happened to the window.

Hailey disappears for a minute, telling me, "Stay there." And thanks for that, by the way, 'cause it's 4:30 in the morning and where the hell else am I going to go? She comes back with a kitchen towel and a white garbage bag and starts working on the broken window so we can get Ryan's door open.

"Seth, help me."

She's carefully picking away at the pieces of glass still hanging on for dear life to the window frame and I stand there, holding the garbage bag open, wanting to tell those poor little pieces of glass to just let it go, just give it up.

Stop clinging so ferociously.

You are doomed little pieces of leftover glass.

The frame that held you together is shattered.

And suddenly I jump when I hear a gunshot.

"Seth?" Hailey says my name nicely, like, much, much nicer than the previous five minutes and I realize that she has finished the window and is staring at me.

"What's wrong?"

"Did you hear that?" I ask.

"Hear what?" And she's definitely confused, which is confusing me, 'cause how could she not have heard that?

"The gunshot," I tell her.

Hailey's shaking her head. "Seth, there wasn't any gunshot."

"No?" I ask. And now I'm definitely confused. 'Cause there was a shot, I'm sure of it.

"I didn't hear a gun go off, Seth."

She seems certain of it, and somehow I'm fairly sure, based on the stories my mom tells when she's pissed at her sister, that my Aunt Hailey can recognize gunshots when she hears them, so I drop the whole gunshot thing as well as the garbage bag and wait for her to tell me what to do next.

The car door's already unlocked and Hailey gingerly opens it. "Ryan?"

"I think he passed out," I tell her.

"Jesus, Seth, he's a fucking mess."

Wow, and this woman didn't go to college. What a waste of a great mind.

"Seth." She shakes her head, looks at Ryan likes he's an escapee from the San Diego Wildlife Park. "We have to take him back to the hospital."

"What?" I blink at her. She finally, really, for the first time tonight, has got my full attention. "No, no, we can't do that. He doesn't want to be there. He's fine."

Ok, well, even I admit I know that's bullshit. Ryan's like a mile away from fine, maybe two miles. And yeah, the look Hailey's giving me is confirming that her bullshit-o-meter is accurately tuned as well.

She ain't buying what I'm selling.

"Seth. We're taking him back. Now. Before he wakes up. I'll drive."

I'm all about the getting in front of her. I block her path. She has to understand what I'm saying.

This is important.

"Listen, he doesn't want to be there. If you take him back he's just going to leave again or worse, they'll make him stay. And what, his brother just got shot by his girlfriend and you want to make him be strapped down in some hospital bed or drugged into submission? 'Cause he's not gonna' stay on his own free will."

Hailey's chewing on the inside of her cheek. I've got her thinking. I'm wondering if maybe dear old Aunt Hales hasn't been an unwilling guest of the medical profession once or twice in her travels.

I go in for the kill, tilt my head, use her full, formal title. "Please, Aunt Hailey? Help me with him, please?"

She crosses her arms and I relax a little. She'll help me. I know it. She's like my mom's evil twin, an irresponsible Ying to mom's conservative Yang. Yeah, Hailey may have a new job and she might look all glossy on the outside, but she's got a non-conformist streak in her that's gonna' claw its way out no matter what. Right now, I'm gonna' pet and stroke that little rebel yell like a Siamese cat.

"We can take better care of him, Hailey. They don't know Ryan. They don't care about what happened. They're just going to make him eat their food and follow their rules and be trapped in a room. That won't work for Ryan."

"Maybe he needs professional help, Seth. Maybe he needs actual medical care." She leans in close to me, raises her eyebrows and whispers, "Maybe he needs other kinds of help."

Ahh. I'm thinking Hailey has put two and two together and come up with a broken car window. And she needs to shut up right now because now she's got me second guessing myself. I didn't really think about the fact that Ryan might actually need to be in the hospital. Which now, in retrospect, seems completely ludicrous of me considering he spent the entire time I was there, at the hospital, when things first went down, unconscious.

Fuck, what am I doing?

Back, he needs to go back to the hospital right now.

I feel like a kidnapper.

"Seth?"

Definitely not Hailey's voice.

Great.

Ryan's awake.

And that voice. That voice isn't Ryan's. God, it's like Trey may have not choked the life out of Ryan but he sure as hell choked the voice. I need Ryan to sound like Ryan 'cause I'm having so much trouble right now recognizing any other part of him.

Hailey glances at me skeptically and I hold out my hand to her in a gesture that I'm hoping she'll interpret as "just wait a minute." I squat down next to Ryan's door and say…shit… what the hell should I say?

Think, think, think.

"Hey buddy, how're you doing?"

What the hell was that? That's the best I could come up with? Nice, Seth, very nice. I'm ready for the Lame Hall of Fame.

Ryan shifts his head, grimaces, squints and opens up his eyes just enough, to confirm, I have no doubt, that the nightmare isn't over.

"We're home?"

"Yeah," I say slowly, nod. "About that, Ryan, look…" I put my finger up to my nose, cause that's what I do sometimes when I'm trying to make a point. Whatever. It gives me confidence. Or it's a tick. That doesn't matter right now.

"Um, I think maybe I should take you back to the hospital because…you're very bloody and keep passing out and granted, I still haven't taken advanced Biology…"

STOP! I scream at myself. Just stop it. You can't talk like that anymore. You can't be rambling, verbal diarrhea Seth anymore. None of this is a joke. It's time to grow up.

But lookie there. Nothing I'm saying is going to matter much anyway because Ryan not listening. He's already struggling his way out of the car. He has his cast hand clutching the top of the car and the IV hand bracing itself on the dashboard and one leg already out of the vehicle.

It's Hailey, of all people, who jumps into action and practically pushes me aside and leans down and offers Ryan the support of her weight as he winces and flinches his way into a standing position.

Now that he's awake, it appears as though my aunt has abandoned all hope of cramming the toothpaste back into the tube. She motions with her head for me to prop Ryan up on his other side and between the two of us, we manage to make it, Ryan in a slow tow, to the front door.

He holds on to the doorframe, steadies himself, and shrugs off our support, although he shouldn't have, because despite the fact that the doorframe is immobile, Ryan's body is not. He's swaying back and forth, head down.

In the light of the house, he looks worse.

I'm starting to feel bad about thinking Hailey was an idiot for her previous summary of Ryan's appearance. He is a mess.

The hospital scrubs he's in are way too big for him. He looks like a five-year-old dressed up for Halloween.

He's barefoot. How could I have not noticed that before?

He's having trouble catching his breath.

There's blood in his hair, on his face and hands. I remind myself to check the cast when things have settled.

I try not to look at his neck, but the bruising is difficult to take my eyes off of.

Ryan shakes his head a little.

"I think they gave me something. I can't wake up."

I'm assuming "they" is the hospital and "something" is a one big fucking sedative. Maybe Dad will bring some home. We could all use a round.

"Come on, Ryan." Hailey places a hand on his back, gives him a little nudge, and we both go to put our shoulders back under his armpits so we can find a little more comfortable location than the front door.

Mom and Dad's bed seems the best solution. It's not like it's gonna' see any action anytime soon, but it's so very far away at the pace Ryan's setting. By the time we get there, Ryan is shaking and I'm thinking we should have settled for the couch. He whispers a request for an aspirin and Hailey and I just stand there staring at each other.

And the enormity of what I've been a conspirator tohits me gut center.

I don't even know if Ryan can safely have an aspirin. I didn't expect him to look and feel this bad. I didn't expect him to be this hurt. I expected him to be pissed off and brooding and even sad and I was prepared for more violence.

But physically he's not even ready to mourn.

"Lay down. Ryan." Hailey pulls down the covers, assists Ryan into a sitting position and then to his side. She dims the lights and motions for me to follow her out the door.

"Seth?" Ryan says my name, so soft, I almost don't hear him.

"Yeah." I kneel down at the bed. He must know that he sounds like shit or else it's killing him to talk. He seems to be happy settling for whispering.

"Is Marissa ok?"

The fog must be lifting and I'm assuming he's remembering everything now in disturbing clarity. He's too worn out to be acting out, but he's still Ryan Atwood. There are people other than himself to worry about. Maybe he can't fly at this moment, but the cape is on.

What am I suppose to say?

Is Marissa ok?

Gee, I don't know, Ryan. Your brother tried to rape her. She just witnessed you getting your ass beaten halfway to death. She killed Trey. Maybe "ok" is a little too much to shoot for. Maybe that bar is a little too high. Maybe right about now, probably not catatonic would be a good goal.

"My Dad's taking care of it, Ryan. He'll make sure no one messes with her."

And I realize, after I say it, that I really actually believe it. Because my Dad will take care of it. He always takes care of everything.

"I need to see her."

Well of course he does. But he's stuck in bed for now and if he thinks for one minute that I'm helping him out of it, so we can run around Newport at 5:00 a.m. looking for Marissa Cooper, then they gave him a bigger sedative than I thought.

"I'm not sure where she is, Ryan. But you know what, man? You should get some sleep. We'll hang out with the girls in the morning, ok?"

"I have to find my mom. I have to tell her about Trey."

Oh God, what am I doing?

I can't do this.

No, no, no, no.

Check the program, people. I'm the entertainment. I'm not the main show. Fuck my mom and her fucking vodka. She should be here, doing this. This is not my job.

Ryan and I have very distinct roles. I need, he gives. He gets angry, I back off. He gets a girl pregnant, I crack jokes.

I know he needs me to take it up a notch, to be more right now, to be more supportive, to be more mature, and I'm sure on some level of consciousness, it's killing him to even ask for help. So I should pull it together and fucking do this right or die trying.

"I'll help you find her, Ryan. As soon as you feel better, ok? And you know what, man? If you still don't feel good later, Summer and I will go find her for you."

He nods and seeing him lying there, falling asleep…thank God 'cause I'm just about at the end of my emotional support rope…it dawns on me that although I may idolize Ryan Atwood, I would never want to be him.

I would never, ever, want his life.

He's asleep; I can hear a strange little snore, which I assume, is complements of his now deceased brother's attempted strangulation.

Now that Ryan is starting to remember, I wonder if he'll recall, someday, that he asked me to see if Trey was alive and when I told him I wasn't sure, he screamed at me, "Just fucking check for a pulse, Seth." And when I did, I got blood all over my hands and I knew there wasn't going to be a pulse but I kept getting more blood on my hands, because I didn't have the courage to turn around and tell Ryan his brother was dead and when I finally felt like I was going to vomit if I stayed near Trey one more second, I stood up, and by then, Ryan had already passed out.

"Seth?"

Hailey is calling for me through the door.

I look one more time at Ryan, sleeping, before I stand up.

When I join Aunt Hailey in the hallway, she hands me the phone.

"You call your father right now, Seth."

No argument this time, Hales.

Be happy to.

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To be continued...


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's note:** Applause of course, to **Joey** and **Crash** for the betaing, which I'm quite sure, I have already ruined. Thanks for reading everyone and two snaps to my amazingly loyal posse of reviewers. Thanks for taking the time guys.

Still chugging along. This is part three of eight.

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**Windex**

_A Seth POV Concerning the Season 2 Finale_

Part Three

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"Seth?"

Moses, save me...I'm going in.

I clutch the phone to my ear and grimace in anticipation.

Is there a patron saint of Cingular? Saint Cell or something? 'Cause this conversation? I do not want to have without divine back up.

"Hi, Dad."

I'm getting so much better at being the new and improved grown-up Seth 'cause the old Seth would have said something like, 'Hey, Dad. What's up? Anything happening I should know about...say, maybe that you've lost Ryan?'

The old Seth would have pointed out repeatedly how my picking up Ryan in a car, at 4:20 a.m. from a hospital without permission from a single person over the age of seventeen, was completely, entirely, and most definitely everyone else's fault...but my own.

But I don't say any of that. I give the front line pawns a good pep talk, hang on like hell to my king, and wait for my dad to make the next move.

My dad growls at me, "You do not leave that house again without telling someone. Do you understand me, Seth? I don't give a damn whatever your reason is. I cannot deal with your irresponsibility on top of everything else. You do not leave that house!"

Yeah. Got it, Dad. That's a directive that's pretty clear to follow. Won't be needing a translator for that one.

I say quietly, "I'm sorry, Dad. I had no right to leave the house without telling you or Aunt Hailey."

There's complete silence on the other end of the phone and I'm thinking what a convenient thing it is that Sandy Cohen is still at a hospital. Because right now...with me and the quick, and I hope it sounded sincere, apology...I'm pretty sure he's in the midst of his first major coronary attack.

And as long as the paddles are handy...

"Dad, Ryan's here, at the house. He's ok."

Straight to the point. Nothing snarky like, 'It's your lucky day, Dad. It just so happens I have found your missing item, so you can go back to whatever it was that you were doing instead of what you should have been doing. I know you have a ton of more important things to do than making sure Ryan is safe and secure. And speaking of secure, be sure to tell Hoag that's one hell of a security force they have there. Ryan can almost walk upright. I'm sure he posed quite a challenge to monitor.'

"Is that why you left the house, Seth? To get Ryan? Do you have any idea at all how seriously injured he is?"

I scratch the back of my neck and think, yep, I'm starting to grasp the whole Ryan's actually injured thing.

"Do you have any idea how much danger your actions have placed Ryan in?"

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that question is rhetorical in nature. Oh, and by the way, Dad, you and Hoag are so Lucky Charms lucky he called me instead of wandering off on his own, so how 'bout you get a stool, climb on down off that high horse and can the lecture. Hey, and one more thing while we're on the subject of placing Ryan in harm's way. YOU brought Trey home, Dad. You did, not me, after Ryan tried to warn you not to. So if you're passing out 'putting Ryan in danger chips,' better start by giving yourself two.

"I'm coming home," he says and I'm thinking, seems prudent...SINCE YOU HAVE NO REASON TO STAY THERE.

"Hi, Seth, is it?"

A non-father person comes on the line and now it's me who is very, very, silent and possibly having a heart attack.

"Seth, my name is Doctor Stanton."

Whoa.

Stranger Danger.

Now I want my dad back on the line chewing my ass. 'Cause I don't think I'm gonna' like where this is going.

"Seth, may I speak to Ryan please?"

What to say, what to say? A minimalist approach seems the most sensible.

"Um, Ryan's asleep," I tell the doctor.

I hear a deep intake of air from the doc's end of the phone and he's definitely doing better than me 'cause at least he's breathing and at this very second…I'm pretty sure I'm not.

"Yes, I was afraid you'd say that. Listen, Seth, could you do me a favor please and make sure that Ryan wakes up if you nudge him? I gave him a pretty potent pain reliever because I thought we'd be monitoring him at the hospital. I need you to go wake him up for me."

Maybe Ryan will let me borrow his cast... so I can beat my brains in with it.

I'm so fucking stupid, bringing Ryan home. What the hell was I thinking?

I wasn't thinking. Ryan threw the Frisbee and I did what I always do: I ran after it like a good Sparky. I'm so his bitch. I'm Summer's bitch too, but that never results in conversations like the one I'm having over the phone right now.

I may be Zach's bitch as well, but I don't have time right now to analyze that twisted relationship.

"Seth? Are you still there?"

Oops.

Keep the train on the track, Seth. Doctor guy is on the phone, asking whether or not I could check to see if I've killed my best friend.

"Yeah, sorry. Um, how long should I keep Ryan awake?"

I have my hand on my temple because I need to concentrate very hard on the doctor guy's answer. This is important shit and I need to stay focused.

"Five minutes or so. And ask him a few questions, simple ones, like, his last name, what day it is. Just easy questions that he should know the answer to."

Well, that isn't so hard. I'm good at asking Ryan questions. Ok, yeah, sure, I don't always care if he answers me, and yes, most of the time I end up answering them myself, but tonight…tonight, I'm going to be Regis Fucking Philbin.

"_Atwood. Did I hear you correctly, Ryan? Is that your final answer?"_

"Oh, and, Seth? Listen carefully, this is imperative. If Ryan doesn't wake up, you need to call an ambulance. Immediately."

Well of course I do, Silly.

Because you know what, irritatingly calm, doctor dude? An ambulance racing to this house to gather up a comatose Ryan is just the shiny cherry this ice cream sundae of a day needs on top.

"Uh-huh," I answer. And I know I sound like an idiot with a response like that but suddenly it's very important for me to get off the phone as quickly as possible so I can run like hell down the hallway to Mom and Dad's bedroom and nudge the shit out of Ryan.

My dad comes back on the phone and tells me he'll be home in a few minutes, which is both terrifying and reassuring, and I hang up to go in search of Aunt Hailey because I'm too chicken to go into my mom and dad's room alone.

I'm not afraid to wake up Ryan.

I'm afraid Ryan won't wake up.

Because after tonight, I'm really and truly beginning to understand just how much the Atwood family is Fate's bitch.

I find my aunt in the kitchen peeling an orange, which seems like an odd thing to do, given everything that's happening. But I guess that's what makes Hailey…Hailey. At least she's getting her daily supply of Vitamin C.

"We have to wake Ryan up," I tell her.

She looks up from her orange, "We just got him to sleep."

"I know that, but now we have to wake him up."

And surprisingly enough, that's all the explanation Hailey requires. She puts down her half-peeled orange and dutifully follows me down the hallway to the bedroom.

I turn the light up a little bit and ask into the still dimly lit room, "Ryan?"

Just that strange little post-attempted strangulation snore is all that answers me, so I creep into the room halfway, Hailey following behind me with her hand on my shoulder like we're in some horror movie, going into the dark basement of a serial killer, and I ask a little louder, "Ryan?"

Nothing still and now I'm scared and I tell myself to stop freaking out because he was awake, what, fifteen minutes ago? And of course he'll wake up and most likely it takes at least a half an hour to fall into a proper coma. Doesn't it? Because although last semester, in health class, gonorrhea was covered in more explicit detail than I ever want to be exposed to again, coma wasn't even touched upon and I'm completely appalled by my lack of practical coma knowledge.

"Seth, go closer," Aunt Hailey hisses and shoves me into the room more and I stumble a little on the carpet and find myself knee to mattress with the California king that Ryan's lying on.

Do people snore if they're in a coma?

It dawns on me that coma people definitely do not snore, I'm absolutely positive of this. So now waking up Ryan isn't so much scary, as it's going to be a challenge.

I push on his arm a tad and he doesn't move so I push a little harder and he still doesn't move.

Oh that's right, nudge.

The doctor said to nudge.

I decide that jabbing is more closely related to a nudge than pushing so I jab at his bicep and then jab a little more and still no waking of the Ryan and I hear Aunt Hailey grunt an exasperated, "Oh for God's sake Seth, move over."

It's an excellent suggestion and a role reversal I am more than willing to comply with, because, let's face it, Hales has a hell of a lot more experience waking up drugged people than I do.

She leans down over his face and, God love her, puts her hand in the middle of his bloody bangs and says fairly loudly, "Wake up, Ryan."

Ah, I understand now. I left out instructions. This is, after all, Ryan Atwood, and concrete directions tend to work best.

He shifts a little and Hailey tells him again, and a little louder, to wake up and after a few more seconds he opens his trademark one eye and blinks it at us.

I get out my doctor-provided flowchart and mark off 'wake up' and follow the arrow to 'make sure is aware.'

I blurt out, "What's your last name, Ryan?" And Hales looks at me as if I'm fucking nuts.

Which, at this point, I probably am.

"Go get me something to clean him up," Aunt Hailey commands, and I've never been so grateful to get the hell out of a room in my life, and that includes the time I walked in on Grandpa with his hand up Marissa's mom's top.

Because each time Ryan wakes up, he's a little closer to being lucid. And that means I'm forced to be a little closer to trying to figure out how in the hell you help someone deal with what Ryan is going to have to deal with in the next few days.

And months.

And years.

'Cause while some things may drift away over time, they're always visible on the horizon. And what happened tonight, in Trey's apartment, I'm thinking is one of those things.

I leave the bedroom and drag race a straight path for the bathroom. I start throwing whatever in the hell I can find that resembles medical supplies into my t-shirt, which I've converted into an impromptu carry on bag, by curling up the bottom of it, just like I used to do to carry my Hot Wheels.

Never really liked those things. I think Dad bought them for me when he still held out hope.

As I walk back down the hall, I wonder what Ryan and Hales are possibly talking about in the bedroom right about now 'cause, you know, they just have so much in common.

Not.

I ease my way into the room, trying not to drop anything out of the corners of my t-shirt, and I see that Aunt Hailey is propping Ryan up into a semi-sitting position, putting pillows behind his back and repeating softly, "That's it," as Ryan scoots on his butt incrementally up the bed.

I close my eyes and listen to Hailey talk and she sounds just enough like the Kirsten, that if I keep my eyes clamped really, really tightly, I can almost imagine that my mom is here taking care of Ryan instead of her sober sister.

"Seth?"

I open my eyes and Hailey is staring at me in anticipation, so I jump forward into action and hold my t-shirt out to her and say, "Here, um, this is all I could find."

The old Seth would have added something like, 'Because, you know, we've handled limited amounts of blunt trauma at Casa de Cohen.' But I don't say that. I just watch her as she fishes a few things out, like a box of gauze and some antiseptic wipe. She holds up a bottle of Listerine and gives me a 'what the fuck' look and I shrug, because I don't even remember putting it into my shirt. But hey, I'm sure that in some underprivileged country somewhere in the world, Listerine is considered top-notch health care.

I switch my attention to Ryan, who is semi-reclined against the pillows with his eyes closed and his head alternating between dipping down and jerking back up.

I've decided that as much as I don't want to cope with reality right now, dealing with and seeing a medicated Ryan isn't much better, and quite frankly a little more disturbing, because I feel like the drugs currently keeping him complacent are nothing more than a dirt dam that is going to give way with a violent explosion when it finally wears down and crumbles.

Hailey starts wiping the dried blood off his face, going really slow and methodical, 'cause little bits of dried blood are a bitch to wipe off someone's face, especially when they are clinging to bruises, and the whole time she's complaining that, "The hospital should have done this." and "What is wrong with those assholes that they left all this blood on him?"

I glance down at my hands, at my fingernails, and stare at the few flecks of Trey's blood that are still under them and embedded in the cuticles. I was going to scrub at them with an old toothbrush. But then I had to leave the house, because Ryan called me and jump-started this already insane night.

I hear a loud gunshot and look frantically at Hailey and she says to me, "Sandy must be home."

Right.

The front door slamming, not a gunshot.

Silly me.

Ryan doesn't react to the news. He hasn't bothered to reopen his one eyeball and I doubt he ever did open the other one.

"SETH?"

I hear my dad call my name loudly and I turn to let him know we're in the bedroom and all the stuff falls out of my shirt and I look at it and decide that if Hailey needed anything else she would have gotten it by now, so I kick the stuff towards the closet and then walk out of the bedroom into the hallway and run square into my dad...and some dude holding...yep, sure is...a black bag. And my eyes follow the black bag up to the guy's face.

"Seth, this is Doctor Stanton."

I wave a few fingers at him, curl my upper lip up a little and hope that he can tell how massively sorry I am for having taken his patient away from him. I make a mental note to ask my dad someday how he managed to score an ER doctor at 5:00 a.m. but then again, he is Sandy Cohen, and he just has a way of doing these things.

My dad gives me a look of, 'just wait until I have a spare second and then you are so screwed,' and starts to escort the doctor into the bedroom.

Hailey meets the two of them at the door and tells my dad, "He's really out of it, Sandy."

And I assume she is referring to Ryan, although I'm thinking I could pretty much dance to the same tune.

"Has he said anything?" my dad asks, and I see Hailey shake her head "no," and my dad puts his hand on her shoulder and thanks her.

He disappears, shutting the bedroom door behind him, and Hales and I stand in the hallway, staring at the closed door.

"I'm going to go lay down on the couch," she says and then yawns, loud and not very lady-like.

Don't forget your half-peeled orange, I almost tell her.

But I don't.

Hailey brushes past me, and then stops and turns around. "You should go lie down too."

Yeah, that'll happen.

"Ok." I nod up and down. "Sounds good."

I wait 'til she's out of sight then I lean against the wall and slide down it until I'm sitting on the carpet and I drop my head down and just let it hang and be a beneficiary of properly functioning neck muscles.

I'm so fucking tired.

The thought occurs to me, in a sun flare of insight, as if I'm Ben Franklin holding the kite string, that I've never been this tired in my life.

I sit there, on the ground, watching the closed bedroom door, very, very closely, on alert, like I'm a Pit Bull, waiting for the exact right moment to pounce on a baby bunny.

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"Seth."

My dad is leaning over me, shaking my shoulder.

I move my head back and forth, blink a bunch.

Must have fallen asleep.

I glance at my watch expecting it to be hours from when I sat down against the wall but it's only been twenty minutes.

I pinch the bridge of my nose and continue to shake my head. I glance up and it's just the two of us, my dad and me. The bedroom door is open slightly and I look at it and then back expectantly to my dad.

"Ryan's still here," my dad reads my mind. "He's sleeping. Doctor Stanton said he could stay as long as there's no sign of complications. I have to run him by the hospital later today for a check-up."

I almost ask, "Complications to what?" 'Cause I'm still not sure exactly what's going on with Ryan medically, but come on, I really don't want to know the full extent of what, in the last few minutes of his life, Trey did to his little brother.

I do that sometimes. I gloss over the details. It makes selective ignorance so much easier.

"Has he said anything to you?" my dad asks me. His voice sounds different, aged, worn out, defeated. Maybe everyone's voice has changed tonight. I'd better check mine, see if I still sound like Seth.

Maybe I expected him to be mad at me, be yelling at me. But it seems as though the time with Ryan and the doctor, in the bedroom, has completely taken the wind out of my dad's angry sails.

His concern for Ryan has trumped my verbal ass kicking.

"Seth, has Ryan said anything at all to you?"

The old Seth would respond with, 'About what, Dad? Oh, you mean the drug dealing, attempted rapist dead brother killed by the pistol-wielding girlfriend? Is that what you are referring to, Dad?'

The new me just shakes his head. I leave out the cast breaking the window thing, because the time to tell that story was when the doctor was here and oops, my bad, how could that have slipped my mind?

But it did.

"Marissa," I hear myself say. "Ryan asked about Marissa."

My dad rubs his forehead and tells me, "I spent half the night on the phone with Chris Johnson from the DA's office. There's a good chance they won't press charges against her." He sighs, brushes his hair back, and lets out a puff of air. "You kids are going to have to go in and give depositions. Chris wanted to haul you all in tonight, but I talked him out of it."

What does one wear to a deposition? Maybe my brown cords are clean. But it's summer and the cords are too hot for...

"Seth?"

What? Oh yeah, my dad and I are talking.

"Um, his mom. He mentioned his mom, and finding her."

My dad stares at me and doesn't appear to have a pat little 'I spoke to Chris Johnson at the DA's office' answer for that one, so I offer, "I um, told him, that if he wasn't up to it, Summer and I would go find her."

Ok, now that just sounds ridiculous.

It didn't an hour ago, in the bedroom, when I felt like a piece of duct tape trying to hold Ryan together but out here, in the hallway, away from my immediate need to pacify Ryan, I realize that Summer and I, in the rent-a-car, roving the streets of Chino with a bullhorn yelling out the broken window, "Dawn Atwood. Has anyone seen Dawn Atwood?" is so not going to happen.

My dad is way ahead of me. "I'll contact a private detective in a few hours."

Of course he will.

Because long before Ryan was born, my dad had a cape of his own.

"You should try and get some sleep, son."

The old Seth would. He would go up to his room and grab Captain Oats and crawl under the sheets and let his dad handle this whole, entire, fucking mess. Trey needs to be buried, right? So that's a funeral and that takes planning and let's see...who's gonna' be heading that morbid parade? Sandy Cohen. Marissa's gonna' need some on-going legal assistance...Sandy Cohen. Ryan needs to go back to the hospital...Sandy Cohen. Who is dealing with his wife in rehab? That's right folks, Sandy Cohen. Who's gonna' find Ryan's mom? Sandy Cohen. Who's not going to sleep anytime soon, 'cause they're going to be sitting next to Ryan, watching him breathe? Sandy Cohen.

"Dad, you go to bed, you must be exhausted. I'll stay up with Ryan."

He looks at me as if I've revealed the secret of life and I think how sad it is, that such a small offer, would make this guy look at me with more pride than he ever has in my entire life.

"Can you handle it, Seth?"

Can I handle it?

Can I handle it?

Let's see. No, actually, I can't handle it.

I'm hearing gunshots, Dad, and I can't stop thinking about how I still have Trey's blood on my hands, down deep, under my fingernails. Do you want to see it? And Marissa, my friend, maybe not my best friend, but still my friend, she shot a person tonight and killed him. She killed Trey, who just a few weeks ago, was swimming in our pool and eating our food and living in our pool house. He was really good at _Tony Hawk's Underground_, did you know that? He used to play it with me all the time 'cause Ryan can't stand it. And yeah, we didn't really talk too much. Well, Trey didn't, but I still knew him a little bit. And I know Trey did bad things, ok, I get that. But _should be dead _bad things? Like, _only twenty-one years old _and dead?

Like he was irredeemable by anyone's standards, so dead is the best solution?

"You'll need to wake Ryan up every hour, son. If his breathing changes in any way, or he won't wake up, come and get me right away."

Ryan.

Have you noticed that Ryan isn't Ryan right now, Dad?

And I'm scared that he won't be again.

I'm scared that whoever that is, in the bedroom, may have replaced my Ryan, for good. Because I'm trying to figure out how he's gonna' bounce back from what happened tonight. How the hell is he going to do that? I'm not sure if even Ryan Atwood can solve this problem with that magic, apathetic force field he surrounds himself with. And you know what, Dad? Do you want to know the really horrible part? I'm pretty sure I'm more concerned over how Ryan...not being Ryan anymore...is going to affect me… more than it is him.

There. I said it.

I said what I've been thinking the minute I was sitting in the back of that police car with Summer.

I keep thinking, how are Ryan and me gonna' float in the pool and go to school and worry about all my shallow bullshit...now that Marissa has killed Trey? How are things not irreparably demolished by something like that? How is tonight not going to ruin, on some level, the rest of our lives?

And yeah, I could blame everybody else, 'cause everybody else is to blame, but I hate myself because I'm the one who told Ryan about what Trey had done to Marissa. I told him because I was afraid that if he found out I knew and didn't tell him, he wouldn't be my friend anymore.

I was more willing to risk Ryan's reaction than I was his friendship.

But I see now, I made the wrong choice, and Ryan's paying the price.

"Are you sure you can handle it, Seth?"

No, I can't handle any of this.

I'm coming apart.

"Yeah, got it, wake Ryan up every hour. No problem. Go get some sleep."

He pats me on the shoulder. I've redeemed myself. I've earned a Sandy Cohen pat.

Before I go into the bedroom, I stop in at the kitchen, to snag something with caffeine.

Aunt Hailey's orange is still on the counter, sitting there, half peeled, incomplete.

I feel a little sorry for it, 'cause it spent all that time growing, and now, instead of reaching its ultimate destiny, a human stomach, it's gonna' end up in the trash.

It seems like such a waste.

So I grab the orange, and take it with me back to Mom and Dad's room, and slowly finish peeling it, while I wait in the dark to wake up Ryan.

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To be continued…………..


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note: **Have to start out, of course, by thanking **Joey** and **Crash** for the beta job. All mistakes are mine though, 'cause I can't leave well enough alone.

Thanks for reading. This is part four of eight. (Psssst…Hi Del and Antigone. The party is NEVER complete without you.)

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**Windex**

_A Seth POV Concerning the Season Two Finale_

Part Four

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"Seth?"

The last two times I woke Ryan up, he didn't say anything, didn't even acknowledge my presence.

I'm used to him being quiet, but this is a different quiet, a dangerous quiet. Last night and this morning, Ryan's silence and his almost complete lack of the use of the English language, is one of the most eerie and unnerving things I have ever experienced.

"Seth?"

This time, finally, he says my name, and I don't want to lose the opportunity to hear him speak, so I lean over on the bed, my head just above his, and I tell him, "I'm right here, Ryan."

And I have been right here, in Mom and Dad's bedroom, for almost three hours, watching him, even though he probably doesn't have a clue.

Scratch that.

I'm sure he doesn't have a clue.

You know, sitting in silence, trying to make sure someone will wake up and that someone is still breathing and that their breathing hasn't changed, is very exhausting work. I feel like my nerves are on steroids, like they've been pumping more iron than those guys at Venice Beach.

Ryan is starting to fall back asleep but I'm desperate to keep him awake, desperate for something from him, some sign that my version of Ryan is still in there, somewhere, so I practically shout, "Ryan, I'm right here."

"I'm thirsty."

Ok, well, that's not exactly the Seth/Ryan quality time I was hoping for, but it's sure as shit start.

I tell Ryan, "I'll be right back, man, all right? I'll get you something to drink."

He nods and I scramble out of the room. I figure if I don't have a bottle of water in Ryan's hand in about 30 seconds, he's going to fall back asleep on me.

In the kitchen, an evidently now-awake Aunt Hailey is standing at the coffee maker in one of Mom's robes, pouring a cup of coffee from the third pot I've made in three hours.

"Jeez." She glances into her mug cautiously, like she's a member of the bomb squad approaching a suspicious bag left unattended at the airport. She sniffs at it, scrunches up her nose, and then asks me, "Did you leave any of the coffee in the can? Or did you just pour it all in at once?"

If that's her rendition of, 'Thanks for making some coffee Seth,' it's completely lacking in gratitude.

Whatever.

I don't have time for her bullshit right now.

I make a beeline for the fridge and grab a bottle of water, accidentally knocking over another bottle of water, which accidentally knocks over another bottle of water, which accidentally knocks over another one until I find myself giving up on trying to administer any sort of damage control. I slam the refrigerator door shut so I don't have to deal with a plastic avalanche of aqua.

Why in the hell anyway do people stack those things so close together?

I pivot around and Hales is hugging her mug of unwanted coffee, just staring at me.

"Did you get any sleep last night, Seth?"

"Yes," I answer defensively, clutching Ryan's bottle of water.

Yes I did, thank you, Aunt Hailey, I slept an entire twenty minutes, sitting on the hallway floor.

"You look possessed." She takes a step forward towards me, one hand on her coffee cup, one hand on her hip, and both eyeballs trained on me.

"Ok…thanks," I answer, because I've weighed the option of saying the other response that's ping- ponging around in my head, which is 'fuck off,' and I've decided that 'ok…thanks' is the less-controversial road to drive down.

Before she can say another word, I scoot out of the kitchen and rush down the hallway doing my fast dandy walk, as Summer so 'PC'ly phrases it.

Ryan has flipped onto his side, instead of just passing out in whatever position he's been put in, and I take that as a good sign.

The old Ryan, my Ryan, sleeps on his side most of the time, in the same position, one hand tucked under a blanket or pillow, the other arm straight out.

Not that I watch him sleep a lot. I don't, I swear. It's just that I tend to wake him up a lot, randomly, whenever I need him to listen to me…about anything.

I walk up to him and nudge his arm… thanks, doc, I'm sticking with the nudge… and tell him, "I brought you some water, Ryan."

He just kind of mutters something like, "rrrrrrrrrr," which I'm assuming is his own version of 'fuck off.' But he said he was thirsty and I want him awake so I nudge a little harder and say, "Ryan, you said you were thirsty, remember? I brought you something to drink."

I try and put the bottle in his outstretched hand, but unfortunately it's the casted arm, and instead of trying to grab it, he shoves it away.

I wasn't fast enough.

I lost my chance.

He's back asleep.

I glance at my watch.

I go back to the corner of the room I've been holing up in and wait.

I have 55 minutes before I have an excuse to wake Ryan up again.

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"Seth."

My dad is walking into the bedroom.

When did he open the door?

I didn't hear it open and there's no other noise in the room, not even Ryan's weird snore, so why didn't I hear the door open?

"Seth." My dad nods in Ryan's direction. "How's he doing?"

What am I, some kind of fucking psychiatrist? Do I look like Doogie Howser to you? I don't know how the fuck he's doing. He said "rrrrrrrrrr," Dad. I've been with him for three and a half hours and all I have to report is "thirsty" and "rrrrrrrrrr."

My dad walks up to the bed and gingerly sits down on the edge of it. He pushes back Ryan's hair and inspects the bruises on his face.

And I can't hold it back any longer.

I have to know.

My dad made me leave the hospital last night when I wanted to stay. He made me go with Hailey when all I wanted to do was make sure that Ryan was going to be ok.

I've been trying and trying and trying to keep it in, but I feel myself losing control along with the ability to get regain it. I know at this point that my dad cares about Ryan with the same protective fierceness that he cares about Mom and me. So I have to know why did he leave Ryan all alone last night at the hospital when he promised me he would take care of him?

I hear myself ask my dad, "What were you doing that was so important that you left Ryan by himself?"

I wait for my arrow of an accusation, masquerading as a question, to hit its target.

My dad's shoulders sag a little bit but he keeps brushing back Ryan's hair and studying the bruises on his face.

And me?

I can't keep it in any longer.

I'm trying so hard to control my mouth. But it, and my brain, have banded together and are staging a mutiny.

The words just fall out of my mouth, like coins from a slot machine, clanking one after another and disturbing the silence as they hit the hollow tin.

Maybe I raise my voice a little, but I should, right? "You promised me you'd stay with him and then you lost him. Look at him, Dad. God. What if he hadn't called me and just left the hospital by himself? How could you leave him alone, with everything going on? If you were going to just forget about him like that, why didn't you let me stay at Hoag and take care of him?"

Why wouldn't you let me stay and try and make up for the damage I had helped cause?

I have to get a hold of myself before it all comes pouring out, everything that's cluttering my mind and making it so hard to be a new and improved Seth.

I want so desperately to say to him, 'How could you let Mom get so bad? How could you bring Trey home, Dad, and then leave it up to Ryan and me and Marissa to reform him? How could you sit there and pass judgment on me last night and make me feel even worse and even guiltier than I already fucking did, when you fucked up just as bad?'

My father fixes the blanket a little, pats a sleeping Ryan on the arm, and stands up, so gradually that, for a second, I have a flash of him when he might be older, like Grandpa.

The room, the room is so quiet, like slow motion quiet, like looking through a sealed window quiet, and the words that did escape my mouth are still echoing through the bedroom, bouncing off the walls, pointing imaginary fingers.

Dad walks to the door, with his back turned to me and I figure he's going to bail without answering me.

But I should know better than that.

My dad never bails.

He just bails everybody else out.

My dad, Sandy The Selfless, The Martyr of Newport.

He glances over his shoulder, at Ryan, who's still dead to the world, and tells me, "The paramedics tried to revive Trey. The hospital needed me to identify his body. I'm sorry, Seth. I only left Ryan alone for ten minutes. The ER nurse promised me he'd be safe."

The old Seth would say, 'My bad. Spank me stupid.'

The new one has no response. I drop my head. I can't even form the words my dad deserves to hear.

For some reason I can't bring myself to say, 'I'm sorry.'

"When you saw Trey, was there a lot of blood?"

My head snaps up, thinking that it was Ryan who spoke but my dad has turned around and is looking at me.

I must have asked the question.

But I don't remember asking it and the room is so quiet, so quiet, that I can't concentrate. And what in the hell, how can I not remember saying something like that?

My dad doesn't answer me and God knows what he's thinking about me after that question, so I answer it myself.

I was there.

I should know.

The carpet soaked up all Trey's blood and what it couldn't absorb, was left in little puddles around him, and I took the rest of it out of the apartment, on my hands, deep under my fingernails, maybe into my skin, where some of it may hide forever.

And Marissa has a little of Trey's blood on her hands.

And Ryan on his.

And Summer on hers.

"Your aunt made breakfast. I want you to come and eat something and then it's your turn to get some sleep."

I get up and follow him.

Because, after all, Aunt Hailey made breakfast, and won't that just fucking fix everything.

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To be continued…………….


	5. Chapter 5

Author's Note: Many thanks to **Joey** and **Crash** for betaing. (I still have my fingers crossed for NO Crash.) 

Sorry for being a day or so late with this update. I was a bit tired and under the weather. This is part five of eight. The other three updates should arrive on time. Thanks, as always, for reading. Double thanks for those, the few, the generous, the reviewing! lol

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**Windex**

_A Seth POV Concerning the Season Two Finale_

Part Five

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"Seth."

One loud bang of a gunshot.

"Seth?"

And another.

"Seth!"

And another.

My head shoots up and I blink questioningly at my Aunt Hailey, who's staring back at me suspiciously, her head tilted slightly to the side.

Move along, lady; there's nothin' to see here. Just Seth Cohen disintegrating before your very eyes.

"Third time's the charm," I hear her tell my dad.

Rehab and multiple deaths have made for strange bedfellows. Hailey, Dad and me, are all sitting around the kitchen table, eating breakfast. It's as if my family unit has been thrown into a blender and the fruit smoothie household from hell has emerged.

Aunt Hailey points to a plate full of scrambled eggs. "Can you pass the eggs, Seth?"

Here, have them.

Take them, please.

I'll pass on the fucking things altogether, thanks.

They look like a mass of jiggly yellow brains. I lift the plate, like it's made of a toxic substance, and tentatively transfer it into Hailey's outstretched hands.

"Seth?"

"Yeah!" I rotate my head my dad's direction.

"Why aren't you eating?"

I am eating. I ate an orange four hours ago. And then, let's see, before that, last night, Ryan and I ate dinner by ourselves. You remember why we had to eat by ourselves, right, Dad? You were busy taking Mom to go dry up at the pretty detox center. Ryan and I ordered…I don't remember what we ordered for dinner. I seem to recall beef tips but the exact ethnicity is a little fuzzy.

"Seth."

"Yeah, Dad?" I ask quickly, crazy fast.

I'm a verbal jackrabbit, jumpy and twitchy and ready to bolt.

My dad points to the table. "I asked you why you weren't eating. You have to be hungry."

Nope, I'm thinking not so much with the hungry.

Nine cups of coffee tends to curb most every craving. I need a diversion to get my dad off my ass. Evidently, he has a free second in-between saving the rest of Newport, to be my personal dietitian.

I glance at my watch and announce, "Time to go check on Ryan." I scoot my chair backwards, away from the table, but my dad stands up before I do. He's quicker at the chair scooting thing. Always has been.

He tosses his napkin onto the table. "I'll peek in on him. You stay and eat something."

I look up to argue but he's got his eyebrows raised, like two little snakes ready to pounce… well, maybe conjoined snakes ready to pounce…whatever, and I know damn well when not to push my luck. I watch him leave the kitchen and head to the bedroom. I'm convinced that THIS time Ryan's gonna' wake up, and now I'm going to miss it all because of Hailey's freaking Martha Stewart fucking breakfast.

"Care for some eggs?" Hales offers, smirking a smart-ass smile at me.

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It has been five minutes and I can't stand it any longer.

I'm pretty sure Aunt Hailey is saying something to me, some bullshit about staying at the table and eating, but my body's not up to multitasking, so I give up trying to listen to her in favor of moving down the hallway.

I slip into the bedroom and adjust my eyes to the still dimly lit room. It reminds me of dusk, that gray, twilight feel that comes when day and night high five each other as they pass by. The rest of Casa de Cohen has accepted the arrival of another sunshiny southern California day, bright sunlight filtering through the windows. But in Mom and Dad's bedroom, it's as if the night is still hanging on, like it won't let go of its grip on Ryan.

Ryan, Ryan, speaking of Ryan.

_Holy Comebacks, Batman!_

It lives.

It's sitting up.

Ryan's on the edge of the bed, hunched over, his head supported by his hands, like he's nursing the granddaddy of all hangovers, bangs pushed up by the force of his fingers pressing against his forehead.

His hair, still sticking out haphazardly, looks like one of those spiny blowfish when they are all puffed out.

My dad is sitting next to him, his hand on Ryan's back, high up, near his shoulders. Neither one of them is talking and for split second I'm terrified that Ryan might be crying.

The old Ryan never cried.

What the fuck am I going to do if he's actually crying?

_Now seating Awkward and Uncomfortable…table five._

Shut up, Seth, I tell myself. Your brother didn't die. Your girlfriend isn't the one who shot him. You're not the one who went running to an apartment, hell bent on setting some goddamned invisible score straight.

If Ryan's crying because he's devastated, then fucking get in there and deal with it like a man, like your dad is.

"Hey," I say quietly and step into the room a little more. My dad looks up and I notice a small trashcan at his feet.

"Do you feel like you're going to get sick again?" I hear him ask, and Ryan just kind of shakes his head back and forth, no.

He's sick, not crying.

I can handle sick, although why and how, I'm not really sure. I've never actually experienced a sick Ryan before either. Today will be a day of firsts for us, Ryan and I.

We'll just press the forward button instead of trying to rewind.

I can do that.

I can do that. I can do that. I can do that.

"Seth, can you get him something to drink?"

Hell yes, because… I can do that.

Again I find myself at the fridge, darting in and out of it, before flying back down the hallway.

My dad is helping Ryan take off the hospital scrub top and by the way he's avoiding the front of it, I'm guessing Ryan, at some point, missed the garbage can.

"Seth."

My dad's voice is so calm, so specific, so…centered. This whole time, from the minute I was put in charge of Ryan in the early morning hours, all I wanted was for him to wake up so we could talk, and now, all I want is for my dad to keep doing all the talking.

He must have minored in Crisis Management in college.

He's a fucking crisis management savant.

"Seth."

Oh shit, that's right, my dad is talking to me.

"Can you get Ryan a clean shirt, please? Just grab one of my t-shirts."

"No." I hear myself fire back.

Ryan can't wear one of your t-shirts, Dad; he has to wear one of his own. I'm having trouble recognizing him right now, don't you get it? Don't you understand? He has to dress like Ryan. I don't want him to wear anybody else's clothes.

"He'll um, he'll be more comfortable in his own stuff, right, Ryan?"

I wasn't expecting a response from Ryan and BIG SURPRISE...yep, absolutely nothing. But I'm obsessed now, with making sure Ryan dresses like the old Ryan so I tell my dad, "I'll be right back," and I dash out of the room, trip a little, hit the door frame…ouch… race down the hallway, past a still chewing Hales in the kitchen and run smack into the patio door…which is…what the fuck? Locked.

I rattle at the door, shaking the handle, like I'm Leonardo Dicaprio, desperately stuck in the bowels of the sinking Titanic.

"This is locked." I spin around and look accusingly at Hailey.

"No shit," she answers.

"We don't lock this door," I tell her, and I emphasis the word _lock_ because, goddamnit, we don't lock it.

"If we lock it, Ryan can't come in."

Mom knows not to lock.

Mom never locks it.

Hailey takes a casual bite of her bagel. "Ryan's not in the pool house right now."

I put my hands to the sides of my head. God, she's so fucking stupid. She's not listening to me. She's not hearing me.

I take a few steps towards her and raise my voice, "But he will be, ok? He will be and when he is, he has to be able to come into the house and how is he going to be able to come into the house if he can't open the door and he's hurt right now and he doesn't feel good and he shouldn't have to be walking around to the front door. He shouldn't have to work that hard to get into his own damn house, ok? Do you understand? You have to leave this door unlocked for Ryan!"

Hailey and her bagel are super glued together, unmoving, staring at me.

She clears her throat and says to me, really slowly, "I'm sorry, Seth, I didn't realize how important it was to you. I promise I won't lock it again."

"Good!" I huff and fling the lock open.

I'm all pissed off now, and stomp the few steps it takes to get to the pool house. I open the door and stand in the doorway and look into it.

And remember, _"So I know what happened with Trey and Marissa…like what really happened." _

I put my hands on my face and ground the palms of my hands into my eyes, pushing so hard that it hurts.

Why, why, why…and by the way…why… the fuck did I tell him about Trey and Marissa? Why didn't I pull back, shut my mouth?

I knew, I knew it, from the minute he said, _"Yeah, we already covered that."_ I knew in that instant, the way Ryan said those five words, that he was gonna' go off. I saw the transformation in him and I knew that I was about to be the cause of the bus driving over the bridge and I handed Ryan the keys anyway.

I suddenly feel sick to my stomach and I don't want to go into the pool house, and go through his things and find his clothes and stand in this room, where less than twenty-four hours ago I helped Ryan ruin his life.

Clothes, clothes, clothes, clothes, just think about clothes Seth, don't think about anything else.

Just grab any shit.

Something cotton and white, something blue and made of denim. I see Ryan's pajama pants lying on a chair and I grab those too and get the fuck out there as fast as possible.

Hailey is standing in the kitchen when I come back through the patio door and she walks up to me and says, "Seth, I really am sorry about the lock. Could you sit down for a few minutes and talk to me? I'm a little bit worried about you."

Stupid, she's so stupid. She can't even figure out who to be worried about. Ryan, you need to be worried about Ryan, Aunt Hailey, not me. He's not acting like Ryan and he doesn't sound like Ryan and nothing is ever going to be the same and how can you just sit there and eat breakfast like nothing has happened when everything is falling apart?

Don't you see it falling apart?

Can't you feel the pieces hitting you?

"I have to give these things to Ryan," I tell her, holding out the clothes as both proof and a legitimate alibi to escape her.

I walk away, leaving Hailey standing in the middle of the kitchen, wearing my mom's robe, which even on her best day, she can't possibly fill.

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The old Seth would be asking Ryan one question after another, bugging him, prodding him, and relentlessly harassing him.

But I'm the new and improved Seth, so I just stand beside my dad, silent, and help my dad…help Ryan…into his clothes.

Jesus, I didn't realize that Ryan had stitches in his back. One, two, three, jagged lines that look like broken zippers.

Ryan has random cuts of tattoos now, permanent, visible reminders of the night his brother died. And someday, someone will see him without his shirt, and casually ask him, "Dude, what happened to your back?" And what will he say?

"Why are there…" I start to ask, and I want to know, I want to know so badly what the fuck went down in that apartment that Ryan has to have stitches in his back. But this isn't the time, I understand that.

My dad looks up at me, waiting for me to finish my question, but I just shake my head at him and mouth "never mind."

I hear Ryan mutter "Thank you," as we finish helping him into a clean 'beater. I step back, kinda' a little excited, 'cause now, I'm absolutely sure that Ryan is going to start looking more recognizable to me, go back to being the old Ryan Atwood, who didn't whisper when he spoke or need two people to help him get dressed.

His head is still hanging down, bobbing a bit and he's balancing his broken arm on his thigh and he looks weak and defeated and bruised and physically less than that strong and angry person who stormed out of the pool house last night.

My dad lightly taps Ryan's left arm. "Are you dizzy, Ryan? Any double vision?"

Any regrets, Ryan?

Any actions you'd like to take back? Any advice you wish you would have taken, like, I don't know, maybe fucking stay calm and not overreact and not fall back into the same impulsive, self-destructive behavior patterns that have already screwed up your life?

"Little bit dizzy," he answers and rubs his temples.

"Does your head hurt?" my dad asks, because clearly, one: you can't get anything past my father, and two: he's evidently adding doctor to the already substantial list of hats he's wearing.

Ryan nods and my dad pats him on the back and tells him, "Sit tight, I'll go grab your pain meds."

And now it's just the five of us, Ryan and me and his stitches and Trey's blood under my fingernails and this vortex of a bedroom that is stalling off the glaring light of reality.

I rub my hands back and forth, the way I like to, with just the palms of them touching, causing little spots of heated friction and I try to figure out what to say to this new Ryan, that maybe I wouldn't have said to the old one

But my new brain can't think of anything to say and my old brain doesn't have the energy to replace the silence with something snarky. So I sit down next Ryan and, because I have no alternative, I just say what has been on my mind the minute I stumbled through that apartment door, stunned and confused and panicked, and saw Trey's body and Marissa next to the gun and Ryan barely coherent.

"I am so sorry, man, about Trey. I am so sorry, Ryan."

He shakes his head back and forth and looks in the opposite direction of me and stares at the wall and when he finally looks back at me, I see a little glimpse of the old Ryan again, the one that I play video games with and float with and he's watching me, with that sideways glance that he must own the fucking patent on, and he asks me in that sandpaper voice, "Which part are you sorry about, Seth? That Trey stole from your parents or that he fucking lied to me, from the beginning, or that he tried to rape Marissa, or that he held a gun to me or that he was dealing drugs or that he's dead?"

I notice that his eyes look like mine do, right before I cry, with a layer of water making them shiny and glossy and glassy. And I almost wish that Ryan would cry, right now, here, in front of me, because I know now, I'm sure of it, that Ryan won't allow himself to really feel or process what's happened to him. He won't afford himself the indulgence of breaking down and crying, when every other single person I know, would. And how can Ryan always do that, keep things so tightly sealed. He's like a human Ziploc bag.

He's still staring at me, still waiting for a response, and I figure I have what, maybe five seconds to come up with an answer for a question Ryan's never going to ask me again.

I push all the scrambled thoughts out of my mind and, returning his stare, I tell Ryan, "All of it, man. I am really and truly and completely sorry for all of it. I am so sorry for everything."

Ryan nods slightly and looks away and drops his head and probably begins the journey in his brain back to wherever it is that he goes when life fucks with him.

And me?

I just sit here, too wired and tired to worry if it was the right thing to say to him or the wrong thing to say to him.

Almost too numb to care.

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To be continued………..


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Notes**: Dear **Joey**, I know you tried to teach me about single quotation marks versus double ones, but clearly I'm ignoring the rule altogether. I do, however, muchappreciate your on-going efforts. I'm hopeless.

Hey **crash**, I still have my fingers crossed for a decent resolution to K.

**Beachtree**, **famous**, **georgley** and **overnighter**, you guys are cracking me up with your double reviewing. What in the hell I did to deserve you guys, I do not know. And the rest of you nutty kids, all with the reviewing. Very kind words, thanks. This poor little story keeps chugging along. This is part six of eight.

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**Windex**

_A Seth POV Concerning the Season Two Finale_

Part Six

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"Seth."

Ryan and I are both still sitting on the Mom and Dad's bed, just staring at walls.

Mighty nifty that there are four solid ones surrounding us. We don't have to share and each of us has a spare.

"Seth, come here please."

My wall of choice is straight ahead.

I'm counting how many times I can blink in-between each of Ryan's weird sounding breaths.

He stopped talking after I told him how sorry I was that his brother was dead and there isn't a whole lot else to do in Mom and Dad's bedroom so the wall staring, and the blinking and the listening to the breathing is the spectator sport de jour.

"Seth."

"Yeah, Mom?" I ask half-heartedly, absently.

Three blinks that time. I counted three blinks.

I force myself to look away from my wall, turn in the direction of the voice that keeps intruding in on my wall and my's special time together.

The voice, it's not Mom's.

Of course it's not Mom's, dumbass.

Can't be Mom, Mom isn't here, Mom isn't home.

I know my mistake; my slip of the tongue is something that I should be worried about, because my dad is watching me now with that look he gives…oops, used to give …my grandpa, when he knew the Gramps was lying to him about something.

It's the Sandy Cohen_ I'm keeping a very close eye_ _on you _look.

My dad indicates with his finger that I should join him in the hallway, so I stand up and sneak a peak at Ryan, who is still busy bonding with his own wall.

"I'll be right back, man," I tell him.

I'm proud of myself 'cause I've avoided making Ryan responsible for my decision. I've suppressed my neurotic desire to ask him, 'Do you want me to come back? That's ok, right, man? I mean, if you and your wall want to be alone, I completely understand. No problem. You don't mind if I come back…right?'

The new Seth is done showering Ryan with frivolous and childish chatter.

There's no more room left for it anymore.

The whole house is so full, so crowded, every nook and cranny, crammed tightly with regret and anger and sorrow and trepidation. It's gobbling up all the fresh oxygen, like an out of control brushfire. There's no spare room anywhere for my ranting.

I've had to pack up my speech pattern and ship it off to rehab with my vodka -drinking, car-crashing mother.

"Seth."

My dad is getting impatient and as I move closer I see…oh big fucking bucket of joy on a stick…he's not alone.

My Aunt Hailey is standing just outside the door, her arms crossed around her waist and her head down, like she'd rather be counting individual carpet fibers than making absolutely any eye contact with me right now.

I can tell the two of them have been conspiring against me.

I slow down my pace a bit.

If I were a dog, I'd have my tail between my legs.

But fuck this shit, I didn't do anything wrong so I stare defiantly at both of them, back and forth and ask casually, "What's up?"

And just how asinine is that question? _What's up?_ Shit, what isn't up? Everything's up. Up in the air and swirling around Wizard of Oz style in a big wind funnel of chaos.

I'm up.

Been up now, for what? Over 24 hours now not counting my 20 minute nap.

My coffee intake is up.

Ryan's finally up.

In this hallway, the tension is up.

My dad clears his throat.

I stare little sharp daggers of death at my Aunt Hailey.

"Seth, your aunt is a little concerned that maybe…"

He stalls and I want to scream at him, 'Oh give me a fucking break, Dad, like The Great Sandy Cohen is at a loss for words. Puleeeez. Quit toying with me and get it over with.'

"Well, Hailey is concerned that maybe you're a little more upset, about everything, than you're letting on."

Oh good lord, are we back on that kick? Hailey's special brand of stupid must be contagious. Focus people. I'm not the one with a broken arm and the stitches in the back…still don't know how the fuck that happened…and the Darth Vader impersonation. You remember Ryan, right, Dad? Perhaps you and Hailey's collective _concern_ should be concentrated in that direction.

And yeah, I am a little fucking upset right now about…everything…and by the way, shouldn't you be, too, Dad? And Aunt Hailey? Upset…about everything?

I've got no patience for this random, bullshit, _little concerned_, parenting moment.

"Do you have Ryan's pain medication?" I ask him, holding out my hand, slapping at my palms with my fingers, beckoning at him to get a move on and fork the pills over.

Remember, Dad?

Follow the bouncing ball.

Ryan…bedroom…headache…sick…dead brother…ringing any bells there, big guy?

Can't save us all right now, Dad.

You have to pick.

You have to do triage and tag the one who's most severely fucked up. Sure, Mom's a drunk and I'm slowly imploding, but Ryan still wins. He's still holding the heavy weight championship belt for catastrophe.

"You need to get some sleep, Seth," Hailey says quietly without looking up.

"Don't tell me what I need," I snap back.

Not all of us can nap on the couch and eat eggs right now, Hales. Some of us are a little on edge, ok? Some of us saw somebody die last night. You didn't know Trey and you sure as hell don't know a fucking thing about what's going on with me; so don't tell me what I need. You may have Mom's robe but you sure as hell don't have her authority.

Your dad is safely in the ground, Aunt Hailey. I saw the shovels throwing in dirt. Don't worry, you're gonna' get some of his money.

You can leave now.

Go back to Japan or wherever the hell it is that you have finally started living your adult life.

"Hey," my dad points his finger at me. "That's enough. Do not speak to your aunt that way."

And if that's his reaction to the few words I did say out loud to Hailey, I'm tempted to scream the rest of the shit I'm keeping locked up in my head, just to see what witty dictate my dad can come up with.

Pop the popcorn, kids. The _Sandy Cohen Parenting Show_ is coming on. Don't want to miss it because you never know how long it's going to be on the air.

"Sandy," Hales whispers my dad's name, "just drop it, it's ok."

Gather around, folks, come and see the Amazingly Stupid Woman.

She still, and I have no idea how it is humanly possible, she still, doesn't get it.

Nothing…is ok.

It's not…ok.

It's not gonna' be…ok.

"Explain to me why we're standing in the hallway when Ryan is awake and needs something for his headache?"

I stare at my dad, head tilted.

I'm done wasting any amount of energy on Hailey.

I'm declaring her a non-factor.

So, now that she's out of the way, along with her annoying intrusions…it's time to make your pick, Dad.

Time to decide.

Time to tag the survivors in order of greatest need.

Who's it going to be?

Ryan or me?

You can't deal with us both right now.

So who gets your attention? Who gets to be saved today, right now, right here. Who's the lucky one?

My dad sighs and he's looking at me all disappointed, maybe not disappointed, maybe a combination of sad and worn-out, but it's gonna' take more than that to force me into compliancy. He gives up on me. He knows he can't fight this battle on two fronts. Not even my dad can spread himself that thin.

"I have to run Ryan back to the hospital, Seth. I expect you to get some sleep."

Behind my shoulder, I watch him walk into the bedroom.

I knew he'd choose Ryan.

Ryan's trauma is real and solid and tangible.

It's one of the reasons that I think my dad prefers Ryan sometimes. He can clearly see Ryan's reasons for his various crises. Understands how to confront them, or at the very least, how to approach them.

Not like with me.

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Ryan and his pitiful medical condition are turning into an instant olive branch between my dad and me. As soon as he has to deal with Ryan, it's like all my dad's frustration or anger with me just melts away.

I walk down the hallway behind the two of them, ready to help catch Ryan in case he falls over.

My dad and I. United in our front to salvage what we can, sifting through the wreckage, of what remains, of Ryan Atwood.

"You're doing great, kid," I hear my dad say and I suppress a strong desire to snark, 'Yeah, sure you are, Ryan. You're looking pretty terr-fucking-iffic there, buddy. Love the snail's pace. And the scattered bruises around your neck? Spiffy.'

I actually have to keep myself from laughing because, Jesus, things are so fucked up right now, they're starting to turn the corner from tragic into ludicrous and obscenely funny.

Yeah, Dad, he's doing…

Just.

Great.

Hailey opens the front door and puts a hand on Ryan's shoulder, and by the way, what the hell is up with the, hand on the shoulder thing anyway? And then, whoa, what in the hell, she leans over and kisses him on the check and whispers something into his ear and Ryan just kind of nods and Hailey rubs his back a little and I wonder to myself, CAN the universe tip any further over before everything spills out?

A few more steps away from the house and now we're at the BMW and I open the Beemer's passenger door and cringe in sympathy as Ryan lowers himself carefully onto the seat.

Stitches, stitches.

I remember that Ryan has stitches in his back.

A stitch in time.

Stitches in a friend of mine.

"Hold up a second, Dad," I shout out and I race like hell past Hailey and the open door, right into the fame, ouch, got to stop doing that, and grab a small pillow off the sofa and go back through the door, and straight to Ryan's side of the car. He's leaning up, hands on the dashboard, eyes closed, and I say to him, "Here, Ryan," and put the pillow behind his back and gently steer him backwards, onto it.

"I'm just gonna' get your seatbelt, ok?" I tell him and one click later, Ryan is settled, as much as he can be I guess, and I feel frozen, leaning over Ryan, the seatbelt latch still in my hand.

I can't move.

I should be saying more to him.

But I don't know what to say.

Hailey barely knows Ryan and she kissed him and rubbed his back and put a hand on his shoulder and, a few hours ago, while it was still dark out, she wiped blood off his face and he's my best friend and I still don't know what to say. Can't come up with a fucking word other than _I'm sorry_, which is the last fucking thing I'm thinking Ryan needs to hear more of because I'm pretty sure his life is littered with discarded _sorrys_ from every single person he's ever counted on to be there for him.

Bam!

Gunshot.

I startle to a semi-standing position, banging the back of my head hard against the inside rim of the car.

I rub at my head and it hurts so damn bad, so I rub at it harder and it still hurts and now I feel like maybe I've done some actual damage.

My eyes start watering.

Maybe I should crawl into the back seat of Dad's car and have him take me to Hoag along with Ryan because I think I might have given myself a concussion from my reflexive recoil reaction in response to hearing my imaginary gunshot.

_My head is fucked up, Doctor, sir. Can you please take a picture of it? Figure out what's wrong?_

Despite my traumatic brain injury, I manage to stand up straight. Fully out of the car now, I continue to rub at the back of my head while I watch my dad fiddle with his car keys before inserting them into the ignition. Too lost in his own world of _if I just keep charging ahead, I won't have to look behind_, he doesn't see my fantastically insane reaction to the noises in my skull.

If I know I'm crazy…I'm not crazy, right?

If I'm hearing gunshots that aren't really there…I'm still doing better than the guy with the broken arm and the stitches and the fucking purple and black marks around his neck, right?

If I find myself constantly scrubbing my fingernails to try and get blood off them…blood that I can't see anymore…but I know is still there, hiding…I'm still better off than the dead guy the blood came from, right?

My dad's car takes off and I walk around the outside of the house, through the now infamous, it-had-better-be-f'ing-unlocked patio door, 'cause I want to avoid Hailey and whatever in the hell she has in store to mutter at me and I go up the stairs, to my bedroom, and slam the door shut, and see Captain Oats, sitting there, waiting for me, as if nothing has happened and everything in my world is still solvable by whispering secrets into a plastic horse's ear.

I swing my arm out and send the Captain sailing against the wall with a loud thump and I flop down on my bed and roll over and put a pillow over my head, and because my head hurts…and only because my head hurts… I swear that's the only reason…and maybe because I don't know else to do and my head, it's more than hurting, it's throbbing with noise and confusion…I start crying.

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I figure Ryan and Dad should be back in a few hours. I overheard him and Hailey talking about Ryan and a CAT scan that should have been done last night.

Whatever.

I'm sure the doctors are more concerned about covering their asses than they are about Ryan's actual injuries.

I call my dad, and tell him to make sure they check the cast, cause Ryan played a little game of break the window with it last night and yeah, I probably should have mentioned it a lot sooner but I forgot and yes, I'm sorry and we can just add this to ever growing list of 'Wow, Seth has fucked up.'

My dad thanks me for the information and I can tell he's feeling bad about the whole pointing his finger at me in the hallway thing and I hear him say, "Promise me you'll get some sleep now, son."

"Yeah," I lie. "Absolutely. I'm already in bed." Crying like the freaking sissy ass pansy that I am.

"When I get home, Seth, you and I, we're going to have a talk, all right? I'm sorry I wasn't around last night for you or much at all this morning."

I want my dad to keep talking, so I can shut my eyes and listen to him and remember the way his words always manage to wrap around me and make me feel like, even if the world is exploding into little pieces, everything in the Cohen household is going to emerge unscathed.

But I crossed a bridge last night, and my dad wasn't with me.

I left him and my mom and everything and everyone else on the other side with the old Seth. So I absolve my dad from any further guilt and need to coddle the old Seth, telling him, "No, it's cool. I know you had a million things to do, helping Marissa and Ryan."

And helping the hospital match a name with a body and a guy from the DA's office, match a motive with a bullet and writing Grandpa's eulogy and reading it with grace and honor and sincerity and helping Mom pack her bags for rehab and driving her there.

And having the courage to leave her alone and turn around and walk away.

I understand everything you do, Dad, even if I don't comprehend how you manage to do it all.

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I've decided to pass the time waiting for Ryan and my dad by organizing my comic books. My mom is always complaining about the mess and how she hates that they are lying around constantly in piles and could I please just take five minutes and do something about the clutter?

Clutter, clutter, clutter everywhere.

And my brain, it won't shut down and let me sleep, and there's already so much confusion, so I'll do something about the clutter and organize my comics and then that little part of my life will be very carefully arranged and I can start to mentally shelve the rest of my shit that is causing my brain to give off sparks of overuse.

My cell phone rings and I throw a pile of comics, not collectors edition, 'cause I'm not that crazy yet, out of my hand and jump on top of and over my bed and lunge for my phone.

Summer.

And I smile.

Because that's what I do when Summer calls.

"Hey," I answer quietly.

"Hey," she answers back. I'm always amazed at how much information Summer can relay from the word, 'hey.' It's in the way she pronounces it. Right now, she reminds me of that afternoon on the hill, at Grandpa's wedding, when she found me alone, and plotting secretly on how I was going to leave her.

"Um…"

What the hell is wrong with me? First Ryan, now Summer. I can't form sentences.

"Listen, Cohen, I know a lot is going on right now and it's still kind of early, but, could I come over? I just want to be with you."

Hell yes, woman, by all means, bring your pretty little self right over.

Summer can come over and she can sit at the breakfast bar and bitch about the lack of diet soda options we have and complain that I'm not listening to her and then at least that itty-bitty part of my life will seem like it's not unraveling and falling apart.

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Aunt Hailey is downstairs, in the kitchen, doing something that suspiciously looks like housework. Maybe Dad should have taken her to the hospital, gotten her head checked out.

"I thought you were going to try and get some sleep?" she asks quietly, seemingly a little wary of me, and I wonder just how scary I must look right now, that the hardcore Hales is treating me, of all people, like a worthy adversary.

"Summer's coming over."

I feel very proud of myself, that I've bothered to even acknowledge her comment.

I grab a Coke from the fridge, 'cause I doubt Hailey is going to let me within a half mile of the coffee pot, and go into the living room to wait for Summer.

It's so quiet.

No Ryan, no Dad, a church mouse Hailey.

No Mom.

I sit on the couch and close my eyes and immediately I flash to Trey lying in the apartment, surrounded by his own private pool of blood, and so I pop my eyelids open and I'm back in the living room and I look over and see a chair, that Trey seemed to always sit in, whenever he would hang out with Ryan and me.

"I'm sorry you're dead," I tell the chair, hoping it can somehow deliver the message to its recently departed former occupant.

"I'm sorry I told Ryan about what happened with you and Marissa. I'm sorry I helped kill you."

The chair seems uninterested in my confession but it feels so good to just say the words that have been choking me with the same pressure that Ryan must have felt when Trey was trying to strangle him.

"I'm sorry you made such fucked up decisions and I really, really wish you wouldn't have tired to rape Marissa. It's a shame, you know?" I tell the chair. "Because you really didn't seem like that bad of a person. A bit impulsive and criminal and maybe bordering on scumbag, sure but…"

It's just a chair, I tell myself, shut the hell up before Hailey hears you and fucking convinces your dad to commit you.

"But you know what, fuckhead?"

I'm pretty sure I'm threatening the chair now.

That's perfectly normal, right?

I scoot up to the edge of the sofa, stiffen up my body.

I want the chair to know I mean business.

"Screw you, ok? You tried to kill Ryan and you would have fucked his girlfriend if you could have gotten away with it so just screw you."

The doorbell rings and I shake my head a little bit.

What in the hell?

Was I just fighting with stapled upholstery?

I go to answer the door, not entirely sure who won.

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To be continued…………….


	7. Chapter 7

**Author's Note:** It seems I am always apologizing for not updating sooner. This story was even completed before I stated posting, and I couldn't get my act together. It's amazing I have any readers. Anyway, I had to break this chapter up, so now we have eight parts and an epilogue, which I suppose makes nine parts total. I'll have the other two parts up tonight. Always!thanks to **Joey** and **Crash** for the betaing.

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**Windex**

_A Seth POV Concerning the Season Two Finale_

Part Seven

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"Seth."

Quiet, just like a whisper in a library.

Summer is standing there at the front door, the proud ringer of our doorbell, with her hair in a pony tail, no make-up and goddamn if she's never, ever looked better.

She moves into my arms, just sails in, like I'm the Bay of Seth and the realness of it, the familiarity of her touch, kind of shocks me a little, 'cause nothing has felt real lately, nothing, but I rebound and put my arms around her and hug her and kiss the top of her hair and take a second just to recognize the smell of her shampoo and the feel of her skin and how smooth it is and how perfect she is.

She looks up at me and she's already crying and she says, "I can't believe any of this is happening."

"I know," I answer and concentrate as hard as I can on sounding normal and supportive and consistent and reliable. You know what? My Aunt Hailey is good at refusing to allow reality to interfere with real life, so I take a lesson from her oh-so-massive personal vocabulary and I tell Summer, "It's gonna' be ok."

Which, of course, it's not.

But I need Summer and me to be ok.

See, I don't know what to do about Ryan. I don't know what to do to fix him or to help him and I'm a little bit too scared and ineffective to try.

And I can't help Trey, 'cause he's dead and I'm no lawyer, so Marissa's out and I'm no counselor, so my mom is a lost cause, and I only draw superheroes, I don't play one on TV, so my dad is on his own, but Summer, maybe I can help Summer.

Maybe the two of us can be ok.

I'd like that. I'd like for her and me to be like things were yesterday and the day before and the day before that.

Maybe she's the one I can hit rewind with.

"It's ok," I repeat, and kiss her again and smell her hair again and touch her again and just hold on to her as tight as I can.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

We're sitting in the living room, Summer and me.

Aunt Hailey brought us some bagels and orange juice and then excused herself to go and make some phone calls in private, in Ryan's pool house.

Hales and the subtle…not so much.

But at least she has gotten rid of herself and Summer and I can have some privacy.

I'm keeping a close eye on that freakin' chair, The Chair, from the corner of my eye.

Trey's chair.

It's listening to us, I know it is, making me want to set fire to the damn thing and fucking send it flying like a Molotov Cocktail through the front window.

I want it gone from my house. In fact, I want everything that reminds me of Trey gone from my house.

Except for Ryan.

He can stay.

And I realize, what's the use of getting rid of the chair and anything else? 'Cause every time I look at Ryan, every time I see the stitches in his back or watch him staring into space, I'm gonna' start itching at my fingernails.

"I saw Coop this morning," Summer tells me.

Oh yeah? Tell me, how is Annie Oakley today?

Gun shot residue is evidently a bitch to scrub off.

Stays with you for days, did you know that, Summer?

Maybe Marissa should wear gloves. I don't want her touching you, Summer. Maybe some of it will wear off and onto your perfect skin.

I have to be normal. I can't mention strange shit, like contagious gun shot residue, so I ask Summer, "How is she?" And I'm the new Seth, so I don't ask, 'Is she sorry? Is Marissa fucking feeling a tad morose for killing Ryan's brother? Does she know how badly she fucked up or how sorry I am that I called her last night instead of maybe, I don't know, my dad or even the police? Does she realize that I'm the reason she shot a gun last night or blame me or wonder just a little bit that if she just would have told someone sooner, about Trey, that maybe the dominoes would have fallen in a different pattern?'

Does she know how much I hate her for shooting Trey and changing…everything?

Does she know how grateful I am to her for saving Ryan?

"She's…" Summer stops to collect, I guess, her thoughts, like there's a basket somewhere big enough right now for any of us to do that, and then tells me, "God, Seth, I've never seen her this bad. She's just lying on her bed crying. The doctor gave her mom some pills to give her, but I don't think they're helping."

Oh really?

Pills aren't helping solve a problem in Newport. Well isn't that just a major fucking shock.

Summer wipes away her tears and asks me, "How's Ryan?"

Huh.

How's Ryan?

How's Ryan.

Where to start.

Well, Summer, Ryan's an only child now.

He's breathing is funny, he's got a cast, some stitches, some emotional baggage that's so fucking heavy that it ain't never gonna' qualify for carry on.

Let's see, what else? He's drugged, 'cause, you know, what else are you gonna' do with him, right, Dad? Did you even ask Ryan, Dad, before you signed the papers to medicate his new reality away?

Oh, how could I forget? Silly, stupid me. He's got some souvenir bruises, Summer, around his neck, 'cause, evidently, the T-shirt that said, _My Coked-Up Brother Tried To Kill Me and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt_, was sold out.

"Seth?"

She reaches out puts her hand underneath my chin and steers my face so that I'm looking at her.

I don't remember not looking at her; when did I stop? We were talking, right? I don't remember when I replaced her face with The Chair.

That fucking chair that I can't stop staring at.

God, what did I say out loud? Did I say any of that out loud?

"What did I say?" I ask her quickly.

"What?" Summer asks, confused, and I let out a deep breath, pretty sure that I kept the manhole cover safe and secure over my mouth, and I practice the Cohen art of finely-tuned subterfuge and say, "What did you say? You asked me something and I didn't hear you."

"Oh." She sits back and lets go of my face and relaxes a little and I tell myself, "Do not blow this chance, asshole, and do not destroy this chance of normal and structured and familiar."

Summer repeats, "I asked you how Ryan is."

I love Summer's voice. Especially when she's so quiet and soft, like she is right now.

Her voice sometimes sounds like liquid sugar.

Sweet and heavy and sticky.

The individual syllables adhere to my skin and linger.

"Seth?"

"Um, sorry." I shake my head. "He's uh, you know, very, very, quiet. Very, very…post-trauma Ryan."

Think after-Oliver, Summer, only this time, the big bad gun went bang.

Summer nods, as if I've actually revealed any fucking helpful information and tells me, "She wants to see him. Marissa wants to see Ryan. I think it would really help her, you know, to cope with everything."

Oh, ok.

Now I understand.

Summer came over here to check things out, reconnaissance, if you will. Do Marissa's dirty work. She didn't come here to see me. She came to see if there's anything left of Ryan, any scrap of him still existing, hanging on, so she can tear him into little strips of cloth and wrap him around Marissa and help put her own friend back together.

As if it wasn't enough that he was by Marissa's side last night, when the gun was still smoking.

As if it wasn't enough that he standing next to her, instead of being with Trey. That he sent me to feel for Trey's pulse while he put his arms around Marissa.

What else does Marissa want from him?

Absolution?

All ready? Trey's body isn't even cold.

Could she maybe fucking wait until his brother is buried before she relies on Ryan to solve her newest drama?

"Um," I stutter, 'cause now I'm all about the stutter. I've embraced it. Hello stutter, goodbye ramble.

"He's uh…well, Ryan's maybe not ready for the whole visitors thing yet. He's at the hospital, with my dad, and uh, I'm not sure when they're going to be home."

Summer just looks at me, strange, like I've got a big blob of mustard on my shirt, which I know I don't have 'cause I hate mustard and would never allow it that close to my shirt and I wonder what I said wrong, 'cause I'm so very careful now, so very careful and I don't release my words until they've gone through a mental metal detector, so what the hell did I say wrong that she's looking at me like that?

"They need to see each other, Seth. They need to be together. This is all so nuts and she needs to know that he's ok and he must be wondering the same thing about her. Right? We need to get them together."

Summer nods once, fast. She's so sure of herself. So sure that she's already on the road to fixing everything. I rub at my forehead and try to remember why I'm so tired and I look at The Chair and for a brief flash, I think I see Trey, and how can that be possible? 'Cause that's not supposed to happen, me seeing Trey, unless my eyes are shut and now my fingernails itch and I take my hands away from my head and methodically rub my cuticles, back and forth, hard, scraping them with my nails as I go up and down the rough skin.

Rough skin, not soft like Summer's.

She scoots over and lays her head on my shoulder and says to me, "We need to get them together, Cohen. They're, like, our best friends and they need us right now and we can't let them down."

We can't let them down? I'm sorry; did I hear you correctly just now?

We can't let them down?

Fuck.

Summer, fuck, you did NOT just say that.

Fuck.

WE ALREADY LET THEM DOWN, YOU STUPID BITCH.

And my head snaps up and I swing my face sideways and accidentally hit Summer's cheek and watch her, wild-eyed, waiting to see if she heard me and, God, please, please tell me I did not just say that last sentence out loud.

I didn't mean it. I don't even know where it came from.

I love Summer.

Please, tell me I did not say that sentence out loud.

'Cause if I did, and I lose Summer, I don't want to live.

"What?" she asks, confused, rubbing her cheek where I accidently hit her, "What's wrong?"

"Nothing." I shake my head back and forth, probably too fast, probably too out of control, but I'm so grateful, so grateful that she didn't hear my thoughts and I'll give her anything right now. I'll do anything for her to keep her wanting to be with me and near me and maybe it's not such a bad idea if Marissa comes over because Ryan did ask me about her and maybe he wants to see her and maybe Summer's right and if Ryan and Marissa just see each other, maybe things will slowly start to reconstruct, like Clayface does after Batman shoots him with water and he reassembles himself someplace, alone, when all his little globby clay parts slink back to him and rearrange themselves into something recognizable.

Summer kisses me and tells me she'll be back later with Marissa and that I should try and get a little sleep because I look tired.

I nod and promise her I will, because I've lied to everyone else this morning, so why not Summer?

I pull her back into my arms and kiss her one more time and she hangs onto me, and I want to tell her… no I have to be honest with myself…I want to beg her not to go. I want to get down on my knees and plead with her to just stay because I really, really don't want to be alone with the chair and Trey's ghost and his invisible blood.

I don't want to be alone with myself.

But I can't tell Summer any of that, because then she won't look at me the same way she did when she first came to the house this morning. She won't look at me like she did yesterday and the day before and the day before that.

She'll know that I've changed. She'll know that I'm new, and not at all improved.

"It's ok. It's gonna' be ok. They'll both be fine," I tell her, and kiss her behind her ear and rub my hands up and down her arms one last time and hook my neck around hers.

Then I wave at Summer as she drives away and I go back to my room and close the door and start counting my comics and putting them in a row and organizing the clutter by numbers and where the fuck did I put Issue # 88? Ok, yeah, it's a reprint but my dad worked hard to find it for me when I was, like, nine and now I've fucking lost it because I don't take care of anything.

Or anyone.

I don't fucking take care of anyone who I should take care of.

And I have to find that fucking comic and that's exactly what I do. I tear up my room and look for it and look for it and look for it, and I look for it until I hear my dad and Ryan come home.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Seth?"

I'm watching Ryan watch his new wall of choice. A kitchen wall this time, I'm guessing the spot right above the stove, but I could be off by an inch or two. He's sitting on a stool, so height is a little hard to judge.

"Seth."

What is it about Ryan and inanimate objects? Do they talk to him, speak to him, like animals to Tarzan?

What the fuck does go on in Ryan's brain all day?

Is it busy busy busy, like mine?

Or is it in a permanent holding pattern?

"Seth. Did you get any sleep while we were gone?"

My dad.

Hi, Pops. How the hell are ya'? Wait. Don't answer that. I really don't want to know.

"Um." I tear myself away from watching Ryan watch his wall. "Uh, Summer came over for a little while, but other than that," I mutter, shrugging innocently, "I, uh, spent the rest of the time in my room."

I move along fast, lighting flash quick, 'cause my dad, he's the one who cultivated and cared for and grew the original Cohen family tree of subterfuge and I know he's a hell of a lot more savvy than Summer and not nearly as easily distracted.

He's the master of not telling the truth by not necessarily lying and I know, if he gets a chance to cross-examine me, I'm toast, and oh so busted about the not sleeping, even a wink. So to divert his parenting laser back on to the target it should have in its sights, I practically shout out, "What did the doctor say about Ryan?"

My dad sneaks a peek at Ryan and I can't tell if he's waiting to see if Ryan is going to answer me or just waiting to see if the guy was even fucking listening to my question.

I'm guessing the wall is more interesting than me right now, 'cause Ryan's clearly not at all motivated to offer up any information so my dad clears his throat and tells me, "Ryan's, uh, doing better than expected. That doesn't mean that he shouldn't have stayed at the hospital last night…" And thanks, Dad, ever so much, for that little side swipe….because I was almost done feeling guilty for helping Ryan escape. Good thing you brought it up, 'cause, you know, I don't have enough shit weighing me down right now.

"But, uh, everything looks remarkably good, all things considered. The swelling should go down in a few days and the bruising will fade. His breathing isn't compromised so, uh, really, we just need to be cautious of the concussion, take things slowly for a little while."

And the stitches Dad, don't forget the stitches, deep in Ryan's back.

And the scars, Dad. The scars that are gonna' settle into his back when the stiches go away.

If we take things slowly, will those fade too?

"Ryan." My dad, bless his ever-hopeful heart, attempts to coax something, anything out of Ryan. "Do you remember how long the doctor said your cast has to be on?"

Silence.

And my dad and I just stand there in anticipation, waiting for Ryan to speak, as if he's a toddler, just testing out his first wobbly steps.

"Ryan," my dad says, raising his voice, and I suppress a strong desire to scream at him, "What the fuck is wrong with you? Leave him alone, maybe he doesn't want to fucking chit-chat right now."

"Ryan, how long for the cast?" My dad is persistent if nothing else.

"Six weeks," Ryan mumbles, lowering his head. Must be communing with the kitchen counter top now. _Me Ryan…you granite._

More silence and my dad tells us, as if either of us cares, that he'll be right back, and abandons me in the kitchen.

I'm alone again with Ryan. All my nerves and self-doubts and personal shortcomings race into the kitchen and form a circle around Ryan and me.

Duck, Duck, Goose.

My turn again to talk, even though, I mean, what the hell can I possibly say?

"Um, so, Summer was over here and she was saying that she saw Marissa earlier today."

His head swings up and he stares at me and, shit, I didn't expect to replace the counter as his focus of attention so quickly, so I scramble for the next thing to say.

"Yeah, and um, I guess Marissa was wondering if she could come over and see you."

You know, when Ryan wants to stare, when he wants you to know that you have his attention, he's suddenly the least shy person I know. He could cut glass with his eyes, when he wants you to know he's listening and interested in what you're saying. How does he do that, change so fast? Does he have a switch?

"Is Marissa ok?" he asks, and what is it with everyone asking me if everyone else is ok?

I haven't combed my hair in almost two days. Do I honestly _look _like someone who should be judging anyone on his or her health or mental wellness?

"I don't know," I manage to answer, 'cause I really don't know, not really. I know she's in her bed crying all the time, and I suppose I should probably tell him that much, but I'll be damned if I'm going to contribute to Ryan running off and trying to console poor Marissa about his own fucking brother being dead.

"Do you want to see her? 'Cause if you don't feel up to it, man, nobody would fault you for it, Ryan."

Wow, that was actually a very coherent, reasonable thing to say. A few of my self-doubts lower their heads in defeat and exit the kitchen.

And by the way, look at us, talking. Ok, sure, we're discussing whether or not Ryan should see his girlfriend who man-slaughtered his brother, but hey, it's a fucking start, right? Got to start somewhere. Can't just jump straight into, 'Hey man, are you up for a game?'

He scratches at his eyebrow with his casted arm, and the movement is strangely mesmerizing. His upper arm, his bicep to be exact, is so ridonkerously big but the cast makes his arm look fragile and I think to myself, no author, no writer, could sum up the situation any better than Ryan and his manly, ass-kicking bicep and broken forearm can.

Strong and weak and vulnerable and rock solid.

Broken but still moving and functioning.

That's our Ryan Atwood, folks.

"I need to see her."

He's back to staring at me, with his bruised up face and glassy, watery eyes and he's looking up at me, wanting me to make it happen. Depending on me…to make it happen.

"Ok." I bob my head up and down. "I'll call Summer right now."

Ryan nods and when I get up, he says the worst possible thing he could.

"Thanks, Seth," he whispers in _that_ voice.

And it sticks to me like a dirty wad of taffy to the bottom of my shoe. I don't want it there. I want to scrape his _thank-you_ off. I don't want Ryan to ever thank me, for anything, ever again.

In the bedroom, Ryan asked me what exactly I was sorry for and now I want to return the favor and ask him what exactly he's thanking me for. For telling him about Trey and Marissa when I knew, I fucking knew, that nothing good would come of it? For being too much of a coward to turn around and tell him his brother was dead? For risking his safety just because I wanted to make sure that my own girlfriend would be protected from his psychotic brother? For calling Marissa and telling her to rush over to Trey's apartment and try and stop what I already knew was an unstoppable tidal wave?

What exactly are you thanking me for, Ryan?

Remind me again.

He's talking, Seth, I chastise myself. He's speaking. He's at least freaking interacting with something that has a pulse. Don't ruin it by laying your own guilt trip on him. Give Ryan a break. He's already granting one pardon today. He's already going to give out one Get out of Guilt Jail Free card.

Let this be Marissa's day.

Tomorrow or the day after or the day after that or the year after this, maybe after he has had some rest, maybe after he has forgiven himself, maybe then you can ask Ryan for exoneration.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

To be continued... Tonight, cause the season premier is tomorrow!


	8. Chapter 8

**Windex**

_A Seth POV Concerning the Season Two Finale_

Part Eight

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Seth?"

On my way to find a phone because, yeah, would it fucking kill me to ever put the cordless back where it goes? I run into my dad in the living room.

"I'm making Ryan a sandwich. Do you want anything?" He asks me.

I'm too worn out to list my myriads of demands, of things I want right now, like, say, Trey being alive and such and yada yada yada and by the way, Dad, have you seen Issue #88? I fucked up and lost it. I can't find it anywhere and I need everything to be in perfect sequence so when Mom comes home, she won't have to worry anymore about all the clutter that constantly surrounds me.

"Who are you calling?" he asks, pointing to my hand. I look down, and the phone is in my hand and…what in the hell? Where did that come from?

Huh?

"Did someone call?" my dad asks me, and no, no one called, at least I don't think so. Wait, I'm calling Summer, that's right, and maybe my dad should know about that, seeing as how his newest client is coming over in a few minutes, so I tell him, "Um, I'm calling Summer. She's bringing Marissa over."

"No," my dad says leadingly, and I'm such a smartass and yes I'm trying not to be a smartass anymore but the man walked into this one and so I move my head up in a slow slope and ask, "No, I'm not calling? Or, no, no one called?"

I make that face I make when I'm pretending to be the most ignorant fuck who ever roamed the Earth.

"Marissa's not coming over," he says flatly.

Oh, I see Dad left his coy deck someplace else; clearly he's not the least bit playful. He's shooting straight from the hip today, I guess.

Shooting, shooting, right, back to Marissa.

"Yes she is," I answer. "Ryan wants to see her."

"Well Ryan's not calling the shots right now," Dad tells me, all serious like, and what's up exactly with all the gun puns anyway?

I sigh, 'cause really now, who in the hell has time for this bullshit?

"Please, yeah, Dad, Ryan listens SO WELL to you. I'm sure his ass is going to just subservient right down and forget about seeing his girlfriend, whose well-being he obsesses over even when she hasn't FUCKING SHOT HIS BROTHER!"

Dead!

Jesus.

And this is the same girl who flunked the archery unit freshman year?

And oops….did I just say all that out loud? Maybe even yell some of it…out loud?

I cover my mouth with two fingers and look up at my dad and, yep, evidently I did indeed say it out loud and in front of Sandy Cohen and Trey's fucking ghost chair and I hope I didn't say it loud enough for Ryan to hear.

How'd those words get out?

Bad words, jumping the fence like that.

But what the hell? If the bathing suit is wet, might as well go for a swim, right, Dad? I'm all in and I just keep talking and tell him, "Um, sorry about…," I pause, swirl a finger, "that, but I'm right and we both know it and at least this way we keep Ryan at home, right, Dad? Unless you're up for another game of _Where's Ryan?_ A game which we both know, quite frankly, Dad, that you're just not very good at."

Ok, that last part was mean but um, seriously, Dad, I think the time for 'putting your foot down on Ryan' has slightly lapsed, like, let's say by about… two years.

He stares at me and I know I've hurt his feelings and really, any other time, I would…ok, I might…feel bad, but right now, I really couldn't give a shit.

I step around him and push speed dial and smile.

'Cause that's what I do when Summer answers the phone.

I smile.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I'm waiting at the door, waiting for the girls, arms around my mid-section, rocking back and forth on my heels.

I took a shower, mostly 'cause when you can smell yourself?

Yeah, it's time.

I combed my hair and I look better than I did a little while ago when I momentarily lapsed and pretty much accused my father of not really, actually, being much of a parent to Ryan, which in hindsight is a horribly shitty thing to say to the very man who reached into the criminal justice system and single-handedly ripped Ryan from its bottomless clutches.

I'm gonna' need to hire an accountant to keep count of my fuck-ups.

I haven't seen Hailey in a while, maybe she went back to Japan.

Who fucking cares?

Ryan's in my dad's bedroom, lying down until Marissa arrives. He ended up vomiting the sandwich Dad made him and my dad almost packed his ass up and headed back to the hospital, but Ryan said, "Please, Sandy, I just need to stay home." And see, Dad, SEE, it's not so easy telling Ryan "no" when he actually asks you for something, is it?

My dad's in his office, either…let's just spin the wheel and see where it lands, shall we… plotting how to keep Marissa out of jail, trying to locate Ryan's mom, figuring out where to bury Ryan's brother, maybe doing some clean-up work on Grandpa's funeral, possibly checking in on Mom, making sure the _Good Ship Vodka_, hasn't left dry dock, or God only knows what else that man can accomplish from his small office space.

He keeps himself busy, my dad.

I think he's given up on me. I thought for sure, after my outburst, that he'd go all parental on my over-caffeinated ass, but then Ryan threw up and then the mortuary called and then my dad just kind of faded away to his office, the invisible hands of responsibility dragging him away from me.

Which is just fine by me.

Go away, Dad.

I am just spectacular and not at all in need of any help of any kind.

Yeah.

So, I'm staying away from the living room. I'm convinced The Evil Chair is gaining momentum. Ok, yes, I realize that I'm not acting normal. Or rational. Whatever. I saw a TV show once where the spirit of a dead cat was inhabiting a kitty litter box and if that kind of freaky shit, literally, can happen, then why the hell is it not possible that Trey's restless soul has decided to take up residence…in our residence?

Oh, hey, doorbell, so I go to answer it and pull down my sleeves, and yeah, I'm wearing long sleeves in summer but that's 'cause I can't get warm, even after my hot shower, and low and behold, there she stands.

Lock up the gun rack and hide the bullets.

Marissa "Dead Eye" Cooper is in the house.

I look at her and she looks at me and, wow, Summer really wasn't kidding when she said that Marissa was not herself. Marissa's skinny, yeah, but today, right now, she looks like she's transparent and she's shaking a bit and, crying of course and oh hey, hi Mr. and Mrs. Cooper, or Mr. Cooper and Mrs. Cooper-Nichol, or Mr. Cooper and Grandma or….seriously, whatfuckingever.

Summer pushes ahead of the crowd and breezes past me and hugs me and whispers into my ear, "They wouldn't let me bring her alone."

And really now, what parents would? _'Now honey, your father and I discussed it and since you just killed someone, we'd feel a lot better if we hung around you, at least until our own problems overshadow yours again.'_ I am very, very, meticulously, very careful, about not saying any of that out loud.

Summer's here. So I must, must, must be normal.

I lead them into the living room. I'm considering calling it the now Living Dead Room, and I think to myself, normal Seth, be normal Seth, what would a normal person whose brain wasn't running laps, what would a normal person say?

But Summer jumps in and saves me from myself.

"Um, do you think, like, we could all go into the kitchen and maybe let Ryan and Marissa have some privacy?"

She's ballsy, my Summer. Why not just say, 'Hey! Marissa's Mom and Dad, give us all a fucking break on the suddenly-concerned parenting thing and haul your useless asses some place else, why don'tchya'?'

"Jimmy, Julie."

I hear my dad come into the room.

Almost forgot about him.

He shakes Mr. Cooper's hand and goes over to Marissa and her mom and gives them both a long hug/pats on the back combo and I wonder to myself, does my dad ever feel like God jipped him and somewhere, in some other country, there is a kind and socially adept son who accidentally got placed in the wrong family?

How often does my dad wish he would have gotten a son more like himself?

My dad turns to Summer and tells her, "I think you're right, young lady, about giving Ryan and Marissa some privacy. But, with your permission, Julie and Jimmy, could the kids possibly meet in Kirsten and my's bedroom? Ryan really isn't physically well enough to be moving around and I don't think we need a health scare on top of everything else we're dealing with."

I like how he says, "we," as if Julie Cooper really gives a shit about Ryan's health. I'm sure, if she could, she'd find Trey's gun and drill a hole in Ryan herself. Two dead Atwoods for the price of one gun. She probably wishes that Trey would have squeezed a little harder and Marissa would have waited a little longer.

Mr. Cooper answers, "That'd be fine, Sandy. Julie and I are just as concerned about Ryan as we are Marissa." And I watch, for Marissa's mom to pitch a fit, but she doesn't. She just stands there, holding Marissa's hand and I realize, maybe our house isn't the only one spinning off its axis. Maybe other worlds outside of our own have turned upside down.

"Um…" Summer says.

She's got a little make-up on now and her hair is down and she's changed into one of her mini-skirt things. Is it bad, that I think she sounds sexy even when she says, "Um?" And even though I should be thinking solely about Ryan and Marissa and their current reality and their truly fucked up existences, all I can suddenly concentrate on is how badly I want to stick my hand up Summer's skirt and how frustrating it is, that chances are, right now? She's not gonna' let me.

"Um, so..."

"Come on, Marissa, I'll take you to Ryan," I hear my dad say, and reach out for her hand.

And I blink.

And when I open my eyes, I realize that it's my hand that is reaching for Marissa's and I guess it was me who offered to take her to see Ryan, not my dad, and how could I have made that mistake, thinking it was my dad who spoke, when, really, it was me?

Everybody else just stands there and I smile a little, itty-bitty smile at Marissa and take her hand and wonder if she can see anything through the curtain of tears that is draped over her eyes. How long do you have to cry, I wonder, how many consecutive tears do you need to produce, to look as sad and drained as Marissa does right now?

Halfway down the hall she says to me, "I didn't mean to kill him. He was hurting Ryan and I didn't know how to stop him. He was going to kill him, Seth. He was going to kill Ryan and I didn't know what to do."

Tell her, tell her, tell her, and by the way…tell her.

You fucking blew away our childhoods, Marissa. You've ruined everything. Nothing will ever be ok. Nothing will ever be the same. You didn't have one single, other option? You couldn't have maybe, I don't know, taken an extra second and maybe aimed for a leg…or, I don't know, maybe even an arm? What are we supposed to do now? How are we supposed to function? How is Ryan ever, ever going to get over this and how long will it take before you start drinking to make it all go away and how could I have told Ryan about what Trey tried to do to you and why did Summer rush to tell me?

There are no second chances on this one, Marissa.

There's no reasoning it away in a hallway.

I can't help you.

I can't even help myself.

And how could we have done this to ourselves?

Tell her.

Tell her.

Just heave the whole pile of shit on her, Seth, and maybe it won't all hurt so badly.

Do it.

Blame her for the destruction of my world.

But I know better.

I am, after all, when it's all said and done, Sandy Cohen's son.

And in this instant, his morality has won over my selfishness.

So I tell her what Ryan told me.

I tell her, "Thank-you."

And when she looks at me as if I am maybe even a little crazier than her, I clarify my intentions and tell Marissa, "I couldn't have done it. I probably would have let him kill Ryan. I wouldn't have been able to shoot Trey and I wouldn't have let Summer near the gun and so that leaves you, Marissa. So thank-you, for saving Ryan, for saving him for all of us."

Final cost of which, is yet to be determined

I leave out everything else, including my own accountability for her even being in Trey's apartment, because, really, what the fuck's the use at this point?

I open the bedroom door and I figure I'm not the only one lying to Dad about sleeping or not sleeping, or whatever, 'cause Ryan's sitting on the edge of the mattress, back to starting at his wall, and when he sees Marissa and me, he shifts his head and, let's face it, I might as well be invisible, because Ryan's not looking at me.

Ryan's not watching me.

When she walks over to the bed, Ryan's eyes follow her until he's looking straight up at her and Marissa is looking straight down at him, standing over him and they just stare at each other and now I understand, now I get what Summer was trying to tell me.

They need to be together.

Ryan stands up and wobbles a little and Marissa, eighty-eight pound rock that she is, steadies him and then lays her head on his shoulder and says, "I'm sorry."

And Ryan doesn't ask her which thing she's sorry for, not like he asked me, earlier.

I back out of the room, watching them, even though I don't mean to, and they're so quiet, so quiet, even though they must have so much to say and I forget sometimes, how very, very quiet the two of them, together, can be.

I close the door of the bedroom, because this isn't for anyone but Marissa and Ryan and the last thing I see is Ryan hugging her, his head leaning over and on top of hers, and I wonder if he's smelling Marissa's shampoo and remembering yesterday, and the day before that and the day before that and all the other days before those.

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My dad is outside, with Marissa's parents, sitting on the patio, discussing, I'm quite sure, things that I want to be absolutely no part of.

Summer and I are sitting in the living room, even though I don't want to be in this room, threshold to hell that it is, and I'm having trouble sitting still anywhere, but I was afraid if we went up to my bedroom, I'd fucking lose control and pull a Trey, 'cause I swear, Summer's never looked hotter than at this fucked-up moment.

"We did the right thing," she mummers, "bringing Marissa over here to see Ryan." And yeah, I suppose we did.

Do the right thing.

Finally, we get it right, Summer and I.

Sorry, Trey.

I suppose our timing on the whole, 'Getting It All Right' thing kind of sucks, huh? Would have worked out better for you last night, huh, Trey? For Summer and I to 'Get It All Right' then instead of now.

I'm no longer addressing The Chair. I've decided to cut out the middle-man. I'm just staring at The Chair, thinking my thoughts, knowing that Trey can hear me.

He's here. I can feel it. He blood is under my nails, and his soul, as damned as it may be or may not be, is sitting in my parents' upholstered, mostly decorative, chair.

I glance over at Summer, hoping she doesn't know that her boyfriend is…INSANE… but she's too distracted, waiting for Marissa and Ryan to emerge, to realize that she's dating a crumbling fruitcake.

I'm jittery, and exhausted and I start to nod off but my brain won't allow it and I keep an eye on The Chair, just in case it decides to make a move.

My eyes start to slide shut and maybe, for a second, I fall asleep. Maybe, I can't tell. But a bang wakes me up and another bang makes me jump up off the couch and a third bang causes me put my hand over my ears, but a fourth bang makes me wonder if I'm not just holding the sound in and maybe I should just let go, take my hands off my ears and let everything, all the noises, pour out of my brain, like rivets of water from a flowering can.

"Seth?"

I look over at The Chair, and thank God, it's behaving itself.

Nice of my hallucinations, isn't it, to take turns and not all come at me at once?

"Seth?"

Summer. Oops. I'm supposed to be normal and I'm pretty sure, standing up with your hands over your ears is not quite passing the litmus test.

But how can she not hear the shots?

Maybe Aunt Hailey couldn't 'cause she's used to them, being a social deviant and all. But Summer's not. Not my perfect, crime-free Summer. She was scared in the Bait Shop, when the gun fired, I saw her eyes, wide and huge and terrified. Guns are still scary things to her.

Summer can hear my gunshots, if I help her to, I just know it.

Summer will understand, she'll hear the shots, I just have to help her.

"Come here," I grab at her arm and drag her to The Chair and I sit down in it, 'cause maybe the closer you are to Trey's soul or ghost Trey, or whatever, maybe the louder the bang, and I put Summer on my lap and my hand across her eyes and whisper into her ear, "Shhh, just listen. Just listen, Summer. Can you hear them?"

She shakes her head back and forth "no," and shit, I think I might be scaring her a little, because when she says to me, "I can't hear anything, Cohen," she sounds scared and I can't be the reason for that, right?

Because I would never, ever hurt Summer.

Never.

"Listen harder," I tell her, maybe more intensely than I mean to and clamp down on her eyes a little tighter and hitch her up my lap a little further and I whisper even softer, so soft, into her ear, because I don't want to distract her from the sound of the shots, "Summer, please, just try. Just try and hear them. Try and hear them for me. Please?"

"I don't hear anything, Seth."

She's back to shaking her head in denial and I feel my fingers, still cupping her eyes, becoming wet and I take my hand away in surprise, and stare at it, because I think she's crying, and I don't want Summer to cry because of me.

"I want to get up, Cohen," Summer says forcefully, starting to try and pry my hands from around her waist, but she can't leave, not yet, I need her to tell me I'm not crazy and I'm not the only one who's seeing and hearing things and she was there, too, right? At the apartment. And she saw Trey die and she gave me a paper towel, in the back of the police car, and helped me rub some of the blood off my hands, so why can't she do this for me now?

Why can't she hear the gunshots?

"Seth, let me get up. I don't hear anything." And she's clawing at my arms now and what the fuck am I doing?

I'm going to ruin this, I'm going to ruin Summer and me and then it will be official. Nothing of my life, before yesterday, will be left. Ryan's different and Marissa is different and Summer will know I'm different, even though I've been trying, so hard, to hide it.

"JUST TRY FOR ME, OK?" I maybe shout at her, even though I don't mean to, "Will you please just try for me? Please, Summer? Just close your eyes and listen really carefully, ok?"

She stops moving and twists her head around so she can see my face and says, so soft, just like a whisper in a library, "I don't understand what you want me to hear, Seth." And she is crying, that's clear now, and it's making her voice even higher than usual, maybe a little desperate.

A soft, sugar whisper, "Seth, what am I supposed to hear?"

"Gunshots," I answer, and I completely lax my arms and drop my head and she scrambles from my lap.

"Gunshots, Summer. I thought maybe if you listened really closely, you would hear the gunshots."

I don't look up. I don't need to. I know, if I do, I'll see Summer standing there, looking at me, big anime eyes, looking at me as if I'm bonkers, nutso, a major fucking head case, which, let's face it, I probably am.

I start to laugh to myself, wondering if she thinks I'm wacky wacked now, King of Wackydom, with my gunshots that only I can hear, just wait 'til I tell her about The Chair, and Ryan's dead brother's ghost, and my fingernails, and Trey's invisible blood.

"Seth?"

I have to face Summer sometime, might as well be now, right? So I close my eyes and raise my head and wait for a slap or an insult or the inevitable, 'We're so fucking through, Cohen.'

To stall off what's happening, I open my eyes really slowly.

I just want a few more seconds of Summer and me...before it's just me.

"Seth."

But instead of Summer, it's Aunt Hailey standing there, in front of me, saying my name, with Summer behind her, rubbing at her eyes with the palms of her hands, rubbing the tears that I caused off of her perfect face.

"Seth," Hailey crouches down and says my name carefully, just like I did, with Ryan, in the rent-a-car, outside on the driveway. That was what? Just this morning, right? And how can that be fucking possible, that it was just, like, ten hours ago that I brought Ryan home from the hospital and Hales and I handled him as gingerly as if he were a burning stick of dynamite?

She's not wearing my mom's robe anymore.

She's in her own clothes, and suddenly, I can't remember why I hated Hailey so much, earlier. Why I wanted her to go away.

"I'm tired, Aunt Hailey," I tell her.

And I am.

I am so fucking tired.

"I know," she answers. And why was it again, earlier, why was it that I thought she was so stupid? I can't remember now. Hailey's actually pretty smart.

"You need to sleep, Seth," she tells me, and I nod, 'cause now, I understand, I know she's right.

She helps me stand up and I glance over at Summer and I tell her, "I'm sorry."

That's the second friend I've apologized to today.

Three if you count Trey's ghost.

"I think maybe I miss Mom."

And did I just say that? What the fuck? I look around. It had to have been me.

God, I'm such a selfish baby.

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I sit on the couch, pulling at my sleeves, listening to Hailey get directions from my dad and I glance up at him, every now and then, and wonder if he still loves me.

The weak one.

The weak son.

The one without the bruises he can see.

The son who leaves him alone in his house.

All alone, with the strong son, who sits in a back bedroom and hides everything away in invisible vaults with reinforced doors, that nobody seems to have the combinations to.

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The whole way, in the car, driving to whatever the fuck the rehab center is and yes, I know I should know the fucking name and no, I really don't give a fuck what it is, I think about how it is that Ryan can hug the girl who killed his brother and talk to me, his friend, who could have prevented it all, and how Summer can sit in a rental car, with a broken window, holding the hand of her boyfriend who's such a fucking pansy that he needs his mom the first time something, really, truly, bad happens.

I hate myself.

More than Marissa and more than Trey and more than Hailey and more than my dad and more than Summer and more than my mom.

And more than Ryan.

There, I said it.

I hate them all.

I hate all of us and what I want, more than anything, is to take back my words to Ryan, last night, about how Trey tried to hurt Marissa. I want to take the words back and by default, regain everything I've lost.

I want to have us all back, the way we were.

Even Trey.

Have it all back.

Like it was, yesterday and the day before and the days before that.

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"Seth."

I look around. The rehab center looks like a hotel.

It's so bright out and why shouldn't it be? It's still daytime. It's still the next day…after last night.

"Seth."

My mom is standing there and when the fuck did I get out of the car? I don't remember doing that.

It's amazing to me, sometimes, how much I take things… how much I took things…for granted.

I won't anymore.

She's still sick, and I know, when Trey is buried and when Ryan's better and when I'm not hearing gunshots and seeing blood and talking to chairs, my mom will have to come back to this place whose name I still can't fucking remember, and get better herself.

"Seth."

No gunshots this time.

Just my mom calling my name and Summer and Hailey and her, waiting for me, by the car. My mom walks over to me and smiles, one of those fake smiles that really isn't a smile at all, just an expression of concern, and she says, "Come on, honey, let's go home."

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The four us drive back together, listening to the wind whistle through Dad's makeshift window of plastic and duct tape, causing a weird song, like Ryan's anger and frustration and grief from early this morning, have meshed together and are performing in symphony.

But still, despite the broken window, it's quiet, so very quiet, and the car jets along the highway, with Hailey flipping off every speed limit sign she passes, and my mom sitting next to her, looking behind her shoulder, at me, every now and then, and Summer rubbing the back of my hand.

It's so quiet.

And really, what choice do I have, when it's so quiet, finally, actually quiet, what choice do I have, but to close my eyes and fall asleep?

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Only the epilogue left...


	9. Chapter 9

**Author's Note**: Hi guys, last part of this strange little ride.

**Joey **and **Crash** tried to beta and then I changed everything. (Hola **crash**...hug.)

Sigh.

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**Windex**

_A Seth POV Concerning the Season Two Finale_

Epilogue

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"seeeettttth..."

Aunt Hailey hisses the word soft and drawn out, as if my name has always been pronounced as a punctuated whisper.

She plunks herself down beside me.

It's nine in the morning and I'm sitting at the top of the stairs, listening...ok, eavesdropping...as Ryan, Mom and Dad discuss...ok, maybe argue...about Trey's funeral.

"I'm going alone," Ryan mumbles, his voice still scratchy and hoarse and on loan from a ninety-year-old smoker.

I'm having a little trouble, sitting at the top of the stairs like I am, making out what Ryan is saying and he might have said, 'My dog has a bone,' but considering everything Mom and Dad have contributed to this conversation I'm not supposed to be listening to, I'm guessing I'm right about my first interpretation.

They've been at it for ten minutes now, Mom and Dad gently trying to explain to Ryan all the reasons why he needs to allow a 'Cohen Family Funeral' experience and Ryan doing his best not to verbalize why no one but himself can go to bury his brother.

Seriously, if Ryan has uttered more than ten words, I'd be surprised. It's all good though, 'cause Mom and Dad have become pretty proficient at filling in the maddening gaps of silence that now define Ryan's preferred mode of communication.

Yes, yes, yes, sure, Ryan was a bit aloof before his brother died. Granted, maybe not a great orator, maybe a tad succinct and stingy in his use of the English language, but still, Ryan has always been someone capable of maintaining a conversation.

But now, today and yesterday and since the night Marissa shot Trey, Ryan's been painfully withdrawn. I've been sitting near him, these last two days, and next to him, and with him. But I stay just as silent as him, the new me mirroring Ryan's moods instead of trying to force my moods on him.

"How much sleep did you get?" Aunt Hailey whispers at me.

And that's one of the things I love about Hales. Most adults would say something like, 'Seth, you should be ashamed of yourself, sitting here, hiding, listening to a conversation that's none of your business.' Not my Aunt Hailey. She just goes with the deviant flow. If she was a river, she'd definitely be coursing north, fast and crisp with white water lapping frantically on and over sharp rocks.

"Five hours," I whisper back and don't look her in the eye 'cause I know she wants to hear something like, 'Eight perfect hours of uninterrupted sleep, Aunt Hailey.' From the corner of my eye, I see her nod and I suppose that she knows that five hours is better than let's say...three, which is all I managed last night and...NONE...the night before, the night that Trey died and went away and took Ryan's voice and words with him.

She squeezes my shoulder and tells me, "It'll get easier," and I suppose she's right. It will get easier for me, it already has.

I only wash my hands a few times a day now, and I know, really I swear I do, that there's no more blood under my nails.

I understand, logically, that everything is washed clean.

It's amazing, how just a little sleep can act like Windex, and make everything clearer and less blurry and distorted and out of proportion.

Speaking of me and my crawl back to sanity...The Chair and I are in the process of making up.

Ok, scratch that, it's a lie.

I hate that goddamned chair and I'm still convinced that Trey's delinquent little ghost is lurking about and in its butt ugly and scratchy upholstery. I called the Goodwill yesterday and they're coming to pick the fucking thing up Tuesday at eleven. That's the perfect day. Dad's taking Ryan to a doctor's appointment and Mom will be back in rehab by then and only Hailey will be left in the house and something tells me that a truck pulling into our drive-way, taking furniture away and driving off again won't even pique Aunt Hailey's curiosity. Hell, she probably won't even be out of bed.

I'm hoping it will take a while for my dad to notice that the chair's gone, but even if he notices right away and asks me where that chair went and I say, 'Yeah Dad, I had the Goodwill come and pick it up 'cause all I can think about when I see it is Trey sitting there, staring at me, resenting the hell out of the fact that I'm breathing and he's not,' even if I say that, I know my dad will just stare at me and blink and say, 'Ok,' or 'Sounds good, Seth,' 'cause my dad still has a crazy amount of shitty things to worry about and I'm relatively confident that interior decorating is not one of them.

I'm not hearing gunshots anymore, although if I squeeze my eyes shut and concentrate, I can still hear them echoing.

"Ryan," my mom says, her voice carrying upstairs much better than the person she's addressing, "Sandy and I feel that it's important to support you through this, just like you supported me and helped me come to terms with my…" my mom's voice falters a second before she finishes with a quiet, "drinking."

Yep.

Mom's still in the twelve-step program of accepting her role as Newport latest rehabilitating drunk.

I've learned one thing from my mom's miserable experience.

It's perfectly fine to leisurely swim in booze in this town.

You just can't drown in public.

I want my mom to get better but I don't want her to leave again to do it.

I wish detox was an Internet course. I wish Mom could get her rehab degree on-line.

Downstairs, Ryan mutters something in response to my mom's comments of support.

Dad says real nice, not at all smart-ass, "What's that Ryan? I'm sorry kid, I didn't hear you."

And hey, 'bout freakin' time someone told Ryan to pump it up Dad, thanks. I could have used a Ryan volume check ten minutes ago. I'm gonna' need a hearing aid after straining this hard to eavesdrop.

Ryan takes a deep breath, I think, and then talks real slow, as if my parents are that unhappily employed dude, sitting behind the thick shield of protection glass at a gas station in the really, truly bad part of Long Beach, and if you want to deliver a successful message, you have to speak loudly and very, very slowly, as if talking to a two-year-old or my great-great Aunt Myrtle.

Ryan says, "This is hard enough, I don't want you guys there...to see it."

And I wonder what Ryan's talking about, because 'it' is a funeral and my parents go to funerals a lot actually and besides, we all, all of us, Ryan, my parents and me, all just rode in shiny black limos to Grandpa's funeral, and that was ok.

For a funeral, which is, you know, so not ok.

"Ryan, your father may not be able to make it," my dad says softly and it dawns on me that Ryan isn't worried about burying his brother this morning, he's worried about exposing the rest of us to his fucked up family and once again, for the millionth time since this entire insanity started, I'm reminded that Ryan is different from the rest of us. He's young like me, and he's reserved, like Mom can be, and he's always looking out for other people, like my dad, but Ryan is inherently different, different from Mom and Dad and me. The rest of us, we dread bad things, fear them happening. Ryan accepts that bad and awful and tragic are a part of daily life, and balances them, pours them out every morning, like cereal from a box, and counts the pieces and figures out how much he can handle consuming and then stuffs the rest back into the box to worry about another day.

I don't need to be there right now, downstairs, to picture what's happening.

I can see in my head, everything that is transpiring.

Mom is off a little bit, to the side, a part of things but not the center of them and Dad is looking straight at Ryan, wondering if he's not just listening, but if Ryan is actually hearing him, that Mom and Dad want to help him and they don't care what else is involved and Ryan is standing there, with his arms crossed around himself and looking the complete opposite direction of my dad, with his sparkly, sad, water eyes, that never seem to produce any actual tears, and wondering why Mom and Dad won't just fucking back off and let him handle things on his own, like the forty-year-old he thinks he is.

"I don't…" Ryan begins softly, already forgetting the whole, 'could you speak up Ryan' thing, "I don't want you guys there."

And I sit Statue of Liberty still, holding my breath and listening to the silence and waiting for Dad to tell Ryan that he's sorry, but we're all going with him to the funeral, 'cause that's what the Cohens do.

They bury their own en masse.

But all my dad says is, "I ordered a car, it'll be here in a hour."

I may not be down there, but I know what is happening.

Ryan is nodding his thank you and my dad is patting him on the back because, 'I love you' is still too hard of a thing for Ryan to hear, especially when he knows someone means it, and when my dad is done, and steps away from Ryan, my mom will smile at him and give him a hug and then one last squeeze before she lets him go and, as if on cue, I hear her ask, "Do you have everything you need, Ryan? I put a clean suit on your bed this morning."

He hasn't been to his own room much. They've been having Ryan sleep in their bedroom, so they can hover and monitor and parent. He's still looking like an extra from _ER_ and taking medication and getting headaches and throwing up, especially in the middle of the night and if they can't talk to him about what's happening in his brain, I guess my parents figure that nursing Ryan's body back to health is the next best thing.

Ryan must have left to go get dressed. My mom and dad must be alone because Mom asks Dad, "God Sandy, are we really doing this? Letting him go to his brother's funeral alone."

Dad answers, "I don't know what else to do Kirsten. If we push him too much, he may not go at all."

My dad says it as if it's a bad thing and I'm thinking, maybe Ryan should skip the funeral and stay home with us, his Cohen family, instead of going out and facing what's left of the Atwood one.

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I made up my mind five minutes after I got up from the steps that I'm going with Ryan to Trey's funeral, because even if he is Ryan Atwood, poster boy of all things stoic and long-suffering, he's still my best friend, my first true friend, and I'll be damned if I'm gonna' let him bury his brother alone, even if he wants to.

But now that I'm showered and dressed and combed and walking out the front door, I'm wondering how I'm going to talk Ryan into something that my parents weren't even able to.

Then again, like a lot of things with Ryan and me, talking isn't nearly as effective as actions, and I find myself acting like absolutely nothing is more common and everyday than me sliding in next to Ryan in the back seat of a mortuary owned sedan as a very somber dude opens up the door. He's looking a little surprised because no doubt Ryan mumbled something like, "I'm the only one coming," at the guy before entering the vehicle, but he opens the door for me anyway and says very professionally, "Good morning, sir," and I nod at him before glancing hesitantly at Ryan to gauge his reaction to my unexpected and uninvited arrival.

He gives me one of his sideways glares and then stares straight ahead and says, "What are you doing here Seth?"

The old Seth would have said something funny or inappropriate or snarky, but me, the new Seth, I can't think of a single humorous thing to say.

I'm coming up with nothing.

Nada.

So all I say is, "I'm coming with you."

"No," Ryan answers and I tell him, "I'm coming Ryan. This is insane. You can't go bury Trey alone."

And believe me, my friend, I'm becoming an expert at judging insane.

I watch Ryan, waiting for him to punch me or jet his way out of the car and slam the door behind him but all he does is rub at his forehead and so I pretend that the issue of me coming along or not coming is already resolved and I ask, "Do you need a painkiller Ryan? Did you bring your meds?"

He may be in pain, but he looks pretty good actually. The suit he's wearing is the one Mom bought for him just a few months ago for the Newport Cancer Association charity dance. When Summer saw him in it for the first time, the night of the dance, I remember she said something like, "Damn Cohen, Ryan looks fucking hot. Boy should wear suits more often." And I recall thinking, shit yeah; he does look pretty hot, which still disturbs me, because, yep, there are some things that just shouldn't cross my mind.

He's shaved for the first time in a few days and what with the clean face and the polished suit and sort of combed hair, I'm not actually sure if Ryan combs his hair so much as he lets it dry, Ryan looks like he could just as easily be going on a date as to a cemetery.

Except for the bruises.

The bruises give him away.

And the hollow space that has taken up residence under his eyes.

And the cast, partially hidden under his perfectly pressed suit jacket.

I hear Ryan's door open and I figure he's lost patience with me, but instead, well lookie here who has also decided to come along for the drive. My dad stands at Ryan's door, sporting his own suit, probably the one he wore to Grandpa's funeral, and holding out a bottle of water along with two of Ryan's pain pills.

"I know you're only supposed to take one," my dad says, "but I'm thinking this morning, two won't hurt."

Ryan glances up at my dad, probably wondering the same thing I am, which is maybe that Dad really is clairvoyant, and since when did he become a drug pusher to teenagers. Ryan cautiously takes both pills out of my dad's hand and pops them into his mouth. My dad unscrews the lid off the water and passes it to Ryan and while Ryan takes a sip of it my dad says to me quietly, "Hey Seth." I nod at him and watch suspiciously, cause I know when Sandy Cohen is up to something and obviously my dad didn't put his suit on to go for a surf.

Poor Ryan.

I wonder if even for a second, he actually thought he would make it out if the Cohen house alone.

"I have to go with you, Ryan," Dad says. "I'm worried about you. Physically you're still not one hundred percent and emotionally, I have to be honest with you kid, you're scaring the shit out of me and Kirsten. I'll stay in the car during the ceremony if that's what you prefer, but whether or not you realize it or want it, you need people with you right now. I'm hoping you'll accept that."

Me too Dad, I'm hoping he'll accept us too.

And he's scaring me too, Dad.

I haven't stopped being scared for Ryan or Mom or me or you or any of us, including Grandpa and Trey.

I'm still wondering, all the time, what happens when you stop breathing.

"I'll sit in the front, Ryan," my dad says, "since you evidently already have company here in the back."

And with that Ryan's door closes and I hear my dad get in the front, along with the driver. There's a dark partition, separating the front seat from the back, providing privacy to Ryan and me. As the car starts moving, soft music comes on, some classical shit, but I'm grateful for the interruption of silence.

I look out my window. It's tinted and dark and I wonder if the funeral home does it on purpose, provides an instant bleak outlook instead of letting the sun in. I suppose, on days like this, most people riding in the back of this car don't want sunshine. But suddenly I'm desperate for some. I want to open my window and stick my head out and point my face in the direction of the sun and soak it into my skin.

I wonder if Ryan wants the same. Wants to make this car maybe go to the beach instead of the cemetery.

We could find a boat and sail and let my dad bury Trey.

"Seth," Ryan says my name softly and I look over at him.

"Talk," is all he says and the one word confuses me, like he said it in a foreign language and I have to find a dictionary to translate it. He keeps staring at me and repeats, even softer than the first time, "Just talk."

I blink and my brain tries to find the purpose of Ryan's words.

With my hesitation, Ryan gives up on me. He shifts his sight to his window and lays his head back, closing his eyes. Maybe the painkillers are already putting him to sleep.

Maybe my dad meant to put Ryan to sleep, and not just numb him.

"Talk about what, Ryan?" I ask, not wanting to lose him, not wanting him to shut down. I think this is maybe the first conversation, if you want to call what we are having a conversation, that he has initiated since Trey's death.

Ryan opens his eyes, rolls his head in my direction and says, slow, like he's in a different dimension than me and his words have to travel slowly and bumpy on a cosmic conveyor belt just to reach me, "Everything is so fucked up, Seth. Just talk."

I stare at him and he stares back at me and inside my brain, little firecrackers go off.

Kaboom, pop, snap.

His request slowly falling back down to Earth, shiny and twinkling.

In an instant, this instant, right now, this moment, I wish I was a photographer and I could capture Ryan's face forever, so I could some day show it to everyone and tell them, this instant, this moment, is the one second that I realized that my friend was still in there, somewhere, deep under the layers of regret and pain and solitude.

Maybe we're gonna' be ok, Ryan and I. Maybe we can still be us. Maybe a little different, maybe not as carefree, but I know now, from Ryan's simple request, that our friendship has a future and that Ryan's gonna' come back to me.

He's gonna' let me in.

He doesn't mind me being around.

He must not hate me, for what I did, for how I contributed, to Trey being dead.

Funny, irony is such a bitch.

I thought I had to be a new Seth to get the old Ryan back. And now it seems, maybe, just maybe, the old Seth is actually, maybe, what Ryan wants.

He's still staring at me.

I clear my throat.

Just talk he told me.

So that's what I do.

"Um, so, do you think Dad got a two for one price on graves? He could bury Trey in-between Grandpa and Grandma. He'll be like the son they never had."

Ryan stares up at me and raises his eyebrows like he does whenever I say something stupid and tasteless. He shakes his head, rolls it back towards his window, and I just know, I'm not sure how, but I just know that he's waiting for me to continue.

And so for the rest of the way to the cemetery, I just talk about everything, and anything, Summer and summer and comics and bad movies.

Everything but dead brothers and bloody carpets and itchy nails and haunted chairs and drunken moms and my saintly dad and Ryan's fallen one and girlfriends with guns.

And boys with bad tempers.

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There's no mass for Trey, no church service.

We go straight to the cemetery.

Both my dad and I get out of the car and Ryan doesn't argue.

He doesn't seem to care anymore whether or not we force ourselves on him.

It's a little humid, and the cemetery is a vibrant grassy green with Pollack splashes of red and orange and yellow and white and purple and blue scattered about and around tombstones.

Nothing seems real.

It did when we buried Grandpa.

It doesn't with Trey.

There's a tent propped up, flapping in a light breeze, and below it a dozen or so chairs, with a casket in the middle surrounded like a castle with a moat of flowers.

My dad did a good job.

Trey is going out in style.

I recognize Ryan's mom, sitting, her legs crossed, dressed in black, an unfamiliar guy holding her hand. I glance at Ryan but he doesn't look up, doesn't look at his mom.

He's stopped on the opposite side of her, standing.

Trey's casket separating a grieving mother and her live son.

Ryan's mom is crying, soft and desperate with low moans.

She's burying a child today and if I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around Trey's death, I don't have a fucking clue as to how Mrs. Atwood is even gonna' start.

I listen to her controlled sobbing and I feel like an intruder, a spectator who has no business watching any of this.

I understand why Ryan didn't want me here.

I don't want to be here.

A California state police car comes driving gradually down the road leading to the gravesite and Ryan's head pops up, frozen solid on tracking the vehicle and its slow progress.

He grabs my dad's arm and says urgently, "Sandy, I need to get out of here."

I've never heard Ryan this anxious.

I stare at my dad, waiting to see his reaction.

The police car comes to a stop and two policemen get out and Ryan squeezes my dad's arm even tighter, like he's a little boy begging for candy at the checkout line.

"Sandy, please."

He's panicked now, looking wild-eyed as one of the policemen start to open the back door of the cruiser and I'm stunned silent, trying to match up this frantic, pleading Ryan with the confident Ryan Atwood who lives in our pool house.

Sandy Cohen is clearly perplexed. Evidently he didn't have Ryan's nervous breakdown penciled in for the ceremonies.

He's not making a move and Ryan is starting to look more than a little flustered so I step in and tell my dad, "Dad, Ryan wants to leave. Now."

My dad turns his head from Ryan to me and back to Ryan again.

That's it big guy, you can do it. Just do it. Just take Ryan and get the fuck out of here and make up for that night in the hospital when you left for the morgue and came back to find Ryan's hospital bed empty. Because you know Dad, you know as well as I do, that Ryan's asking you to leave but what he's really doing is telling you that's he leaving and you have about what... fifteen, twenty seconds, Dad, before Ryan gives up on you, and just leaves by himself and then God only knows what happens.

Ryan does what he wants and handles things the way he thinks he has to. Nothing will ever change that. Not unwanted consequences or steady parenting or a stable bed or a good school or a pricey address.

Nothing will ever change Ryan's coping mechanisms.

They were branded into his psyche long before he met us.

"Dawn," I hear my dad say, "This isn't going to work for Ryan. I'm taking him home. My entire family is so very sorry for your loss. I think it's best for Ryan if we leave."

Hell yes it is.

Fuck yeah it is, Dad.

Leave his fucked up parents alone to bury their fucked up son and we'll take Ryan home, with us, and away from these people. Away forever if it was up to me. But it's not. I suppose Ryan will have to decide if and when he ever sees them again.

I grab Ryan's left arm and Dad his right and we cocoon him in-between us and head for the black sedan.

"Are you sure this is what you want, Ryan?" my dad asks him, "I don't want you doing something that you'll regret later."

Yeah, like this would be the first time that shit ever happened.

Shall I begin rambling off the things Ryan does and then later regrets?

Never mind.

The walk to the car isn't nearly long enough.

We reach the sedan and Ryan leans against the car with his good hand, and breathes deep, calculated breaths, like he's been under water too long and has finally reached the surface. I open Ryan's door and keep it open long enough for him to settle in before I nod and smile at him and gently shut it. My dad tells me he'll be right back and he walks up to the billowing death tent and I watch him switch from Sandy, caring father, to Sandy Cohen, ringmaster of chaos. He goes to Ryan's mom and gives her a hug and I'm sure he tells her again that he's so very sorry about Trey.

Whatever, we all are.

So.

Very.

Sorry.

Let's just get the fuck out of here.

My dad hesitates for a second, brushes his fingers through his hair, and then marches purposefully towards the state troopers and the guy I've managed to keep my eyes off of until just now.

I don't want to ogle at Ryan's father out of respect for Ryan but I can't stop myself. I have to look. How can I not stare?

I wish Summer was here.

She'd understand. She'd be just as curious.

Ryan's dad is tall, skinny. It's hard to tell from the distance I'm at, but he looks more like Trey than Ryan. He's wearing a dark suit, which surprises me. I suppose I was expecting something orange or a white with black striped ensemble.

I watch my dad reach out his hand to Ryan's dad, and shake the guy's hand, silver handcuffs and all, and pat the side of his arm, and say something to him, as if this isn't the first time he's met the guy, but the millionth. I wonder what Mr. Atwood must think. Does he even know who my dad is? Does he know that Sandy Cohen is taking care of the sons that he brought into the world? Burying one, medicating and feeding and housing the other. Do my dad's actions make him and Ryan's father enemies or allies?

Mr. Atwood glances around my dad and I don't have to be a fucking Hardy Boy to figure out what he's looking for.

It's windy, but the breeze is carrying sound this morning instead of stealing it away and I can recognize Ryan's name being called.

"I want to see my son," I hear Ryan's dad say angrily and I open my mouth to shout at the dumb fuck, 'He's right there, in that casket,' because when he says 'my son' he must be referring to Trey.

Right?

There's more shouting and now everyone's trying to calm Mr. Atwood down, who's still screaming Ryan's name and I just watch it all, clinging to the door handle of the car like it's a floatation device.

Ryan's mom cries louder and Ryan's dad struggles a bit more with his state provided escorts and my dad distances himself from the spectacle, backing off and then turning around and making a beeline for the car.

"Get in, Seth," he orders me quickly and the two of us seem to time our entrance into the sedan with a welcomed moment of silence from Mr. Atwood's belligerent yelling.

Ryan watches me, a little startled, as I trip over myself trying to get into he car as fast as I can and slam the door shut.

The black partition in the middle of the car slides down and my dad stares at Ryan and I do too and we both hold our breaths.

Ryan looks up at my dad.

Tired, he looks so fucking tired, but not angry or shocked and he's giving no indication that he's heard any of the shit going on outside. I listen to my own heartbeat, pounding in anticipation of Ryan reacting to hearing his name being shouted by a man he hasn't spoken to in years. A guy who sounds more desperate and sad than dangerous and I hate that I feel sorry for him because all I want to do is have him remain faceless and soundless and be the scapegoat for everything that was wrong with Trey and is wrong with Ryan.

I don't want to feel sympathy for Ryan's dad.

I want to hate him.

Quiet, it's so quiet in the car.

I understand now, I think, that Ryan probably never wanted to come to Trey's funeral in the first place. That he only came 'cause he wasn't sure if his parents would. That he has to leave because he'd rather abandon Trey's body than deal with the people who gave him life.

And how sad is that.

To be seventeen and have that burden.

"We'll come back, Ryan," my dad tells him, "when you're ready."

Ryan gives my dad a slight nod and lays his head back and I feel myself take a deep, so very freaking relieved breath, as I realize that Ryan didn't hear anything that happened outside.

My dad and I lock eyes for a nano-second and whether or not we ever talk about what occurred out there, with Ryan's father, I know one thing for sure, we'll never talk about it in front of Ryan.

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Ryan doesn't ask me to talk on the way home.

He lays his head against the window and closes his eyes. Maybe he's listening to the classical music, maybe he's thinking about Trey, or his mom, or his dad, or Marissa or fuck knows what's going through his head.

I think about Summer and her light-brown skin that's just now getting darker with the change in seasons and how naturally smooth she is, and perfect from head to flawless little toes.

I think about Ryan and Marissa and how he laid his head against hers in Mom and Dad's bedroom and how she held on to him and must have been thankful, so fucking thankful, that Ryan still wanted to love her.

We pull into the driveway and my dad helps Ryan out of the car. They look right together; Ryan and my father, and I linger behind them, staying at the sedan, in a trance, watching the two of them walk side-by-side.

I'm not so angry anymore, I realize. I'm not so pissed at my father or Ryan or Marissa, or my mom or Summer or Trey or myself. I'm not so scared about dealing with life, this new _post -Trey is dead because of all of us_ life, as I was a few days ago.

Maybe sleep has helped or seeing my mom or being in the car with Ryan or watching my dad, steadily, over the past three days, work his ass off to hold things and people, hold all of it and all of us, together.

"Seth," I hear Hailey call my name. I turn my head to her, surprised at her presence on the driveway. She's polishing the passenger side window of the rent-a-car, looking at me with curiosity.

We're back too soon and she wants an explanation.

"Change in plans," I tell her and Hales shrugs, somehow satisfied with those few words.

"You fixed it?" I ask, pointing at the rent-a-car window, a little amazed because I had no fucking idea that Aunt Hailey was, among other things, a glassblower.

"This dude named Clyde owned me a favor," she smiles mischievously.

I'm not sure what I'm more concerned by, the fact that someone named their kid Clyde or the fact that he owes Hailey a favor…for what…I do not want to ever, ever, know.

"I figured it was easier on Sandy if I just got it fixed, rather than make him deal with the fucking insurance company."

I nod, because my Aunt Hailey is, if nothing else, a natural born, 'screw The Establishment' kind of girl and although I know she's a huge pain in my mom's ass, I have to admit that her subversive ways do indeed come in handy.

"You coming inside?" she asks me. "Kirsten ordered take-out."

Well of course she did.

I wonder if any of us besides Hales will eat it.

I tell Aunt Hailey I'll catch up with her in the kitchen and I listen as she opens the front door and I hear my mom say, "Ryan, come sit down."

I tug at my tie.

It's getting hot out.

Summer always is, despite the ocean.

I walk past the rent-a-car and run my fingertips over the new window glass.

It's smooth and unblemished and looks the same as the pane of glass that Ryan broke.

Most people will look at it and never even know that it's a different piece of glass.

Most people will never know that the first piece of glass that sat in the window frame is shattered, now in a million pieces.

Broken and destroyed.

Ryan will know.

And so will I.

It's good though, that things can be fixed and repaired and replaced, even if they can't ever be exactly the same.

I stare at the glass.

I can see my reflection in it, watching me, blinking when I blink.

Hailey left the front door to the house open.

Inside, I can hear movement.

Chairs shuffling, silverware clanking.

People living.

I can't take my eyes off the shiny glass and my image reflecting off it.

I look different in the glass and maybe I am.

Different.

I wonder who will be able to tell.

"Hi," I tell the new window.

"I'm Seth Cohen."

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The End!

Thanks so much for reading. Heartfelt thanks to those of you who reviewed. I even had a few people nice enough to "nudge" me via e-mail to get this thing wrapped up and get my butt in gear on _Best of Intentions_. (I AM gonna' finish that story if it kills me!)

My writing is what it is, not the best, I hope not the worse, almost always a little confusing. Wish I had more time to write and of course, that I could write faster. I love my little posse of readers here. You are a patient bunch I and wouldn't trade you guys for the world. I've started a LJ for my fic. It has a few stories not on this website, mostly because of content or because they are one-shots. If you'd like to take a peek, I should have most of the stories unlocked and transferred in a few days. My name on that site is **muchtvsocfic**. Nothing too earth-shattering, just some experimental stuff. Be sure and check the ratings before reading. I don't want to offend anyone.


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